Google To Censor US Search Site For European Users
Google To Censor US Search Site For European Users
By Emma Woollacott
2/10/2016 @ 4:02PM
Google is removing the loophole allowing European users
to sidestep the ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling that censors their search
results.
After the European Court of Justice ruled two years ago
that people could ask for search results to be removed if they contained
inaccurate or ‘outdated’ information, Google attempted to strike a compromise.
It complied with the order – but only for European
versions of its website. This meant that European users wanting to see
uncensored results have only to log on to Google.com to get the unedited
version; and plenty do.
This state of affairs, as you might imagine, isn’t good
enough for the European authorities, and in September last year the French data
protection authority, CNIL, ordered the company to start removing offending
content from its sites worldwide.
And while the initial fine was set at just €300,000 – a
drop in the ocean for a company with annual revenues of about $66 billion –
Google was told this could rise to an extraordinary 5% of global operating
costs under new data protection legislation set to come in next year.
And now, says Reuters, the company’s come up with another
compromise: to censor non-European domains, but only when they’re being
accessed from the country where the right to be forgotten request has been
made.
For example, if a British citizen made a successful
removal request, nobody accessing Google search from the UK would be able to
see the removed item, whichever national version of Google they used. Anybody
searching the same domain from outside the EU, meanwhile, would see the full
list of results.
The move seems almost designed to provoke a call to apply
the new censorship system across the region as a whole, rather than on a
country-by-country basis: if a German citizen can’t see a particular article on
Google.com, the EU might argue, why should a Dutch one be allowed to?
And for any non-Europeans feeling a bit smug at this
point – and, let’s face it, you’ve got every justification – this could end up
being your problem too. In the
decentralised world of the internet today, there really is no logical
distinction to be made between Google’s various national sites.
Either companies allow European users to see ‘prohibited’
stuff, or they don’t. After all, purveyors of hardcore porn or terrorist
propaganda don’t get to ply their trade abroad free of interference, just
because their activities are legal at home.
The logical implication of the ECJ ruling, it’s always
been obvious, is that no EU citizen should be able to see ‘banned’ content,
however they try to access it. It’s only ever been a question of just how far
the EU thinks it can push its power.
While it’s been pretty forceful in getting its way over
data protection issues, for example, it’s never – or not that I can think of –
actually been forced to stop legal activity in one country just because it’s
illegal elsewhere.
And if Google really did do what the right to be
forgotten ruling implies, it would be sunk elsewhere in the world. Who would
want to use a search engine in the US, for example, that censored results
according to a foreign legislation’s rules?
Google would be forced to pull out of Europe altogether;
and this is the point where Europeans would rise up in arms. Apart from
journalists, most people in the region are currently pretty unaffected by the
right to be forgotten – if they even know it exists, that is. But they’d
certainly know all about it if Google – far and away the most popular search
engine in Europe – suddenly disappeared.
Google and the EU, in short, have found themselves in
something of a stand-off, and somebody needed to find a way out. This latest
attempt to soothe matters is nothing short of ludicrous when looked at
logically – but that probably doesn’t matter. If CNIL decides to accept
Google’s olive branch, it could give both parties a face-saving way out; and,
boy, do they need one.
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