'Hidden From Google' Remembers the Sites Google Is Forced To Forget 163
Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "Hidden From Google, the brainchild of a web programmer in New Jersey, archives each website that Google is required to take down from European Union search listings thanks to the recent court decision that allows people to request that certain pages be scrubbed from Google's search results if they're outdated or irrelevant. That decision has resulted in takedown requests from convicted sex offenders and huge banking companies, among thousands of others."
Awesome! (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope this makes people think twice before filing a forget-me request. It ensures they'll be remembered.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope this makes people think twice before filing a forget-me request. It ensures they'll be remembered.
Perhaps you'll be the victim of slander and lose your career over a lie that is interesting enough to go viral where your vindication isn't and doesn't.
THIS. All of the stories on this decision seem to be focusing on people who are clearly bad or did terrible things in the past.
But our modern news and social media society on the internet archives all sorts of crap that isn't actually true, and never was true. But the salacious headline will always draw attention; the minor blurb on the back page will never be remembered when the charges are dropped or the person is acquitted or everyone just admits that it was a mistake.
(Just to be clear: I don't think the EU decision will actually work, and TFA is proof of it. But we do have a real problem -- even if 95% of the claims made so far have been by people who committed horrible bad past acts, the real injustice is to the 5% who just got caught up in media attention for something that turned out not to be true, or even nowhere near as horrible as people claimed.)
Will Google visit his site? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Interesting)
Agree, but fixing the root cause of this is MUCH harder than removing some search results.
Heck, getting gay marriage legalized is probably an easier cultural change than getting people to treat information they hear with appropriate skepticism and giving people a chance. Actually, if we could fix that then getting gay marriage legalized would be a simple follow-on...
Re:When is it appropriate to forget a conviction? (Score:5, Interesting)
You shouldn't assume that because Google has removed a record that someone has a legal right to be forgotten.
Google is intentionally fucking around with removals because it's pissed off at the court ruling, so it's trying to make as much of a mockery as it can without falling foul of the law.
That means it's removing cases where there is clear public interest defence, because it wants to make a point.
Which is one of the reasons having market monopolies is bad. Because Google has a search engine monopoly it can fuck around with results to suit it's political agenda. In a truly competitive market this would hurt it because other engines would keep the public interest stuff and only remove the legit stuff.
Given this, I would suggest that rather than going to .com instead of .co.uk you just go to a different search engine altogether - one that doesn't manipulate results to suit it's political agenda which is exactly what Google is doing here.
There is absolutely no reason someone convicted of a serious crime 5 years ago would have their conviction considered spent. Even public bankruptcy records can be used by credit rating agencies up to 7 years after the event.
Only minor crimes have shorter periods, such as speeding which I believe is about 3 years normally.
This is Google playing politics, and not a problem with European law stating that people still serving sentences can have their crimes forgotten or anything stupid like that.