Right now, Google blocks “forgotten” articles on EU versions of its site.
But EU data protection regulators say that because Europeans can simply load the US version of Google and see the censored results that Google has not done enough. It’s conceivable that they could demand that Google block “forgotten” results from searches originating on a European IP address, but that would also be trivial to circumvent. Ultimately, the only way to accomplish the European goal is to block the results worldwide.
This would be a policy disaster. If it’s legit for the EU to dictate what Google can publish in Canada, the US, Saudi Arabia and Thailand, why not vice-versa? I’m sure the Thai monarchy would love to extend its lese majeste censorship of material critical of the royal family to the rest of the world; the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice would like to use Wahabiism to filter the net; Putin would love to extend his ban on “homosexual propaganda” to the EU, and so on.
A dumbass Canadian judge embarrassed the land of my birth by ordering something on these lines recently. It’s an attitude that’s one part King Kanute, one part Lord High Executioner.
Google under fire from regulators over response to EU privacy ruling [Reuters]
(via Ars Technica)
(Image: Facebook: The privacy saga continues, opensource.com, CC-BY-SA)