This is like China wanting to extend the great firewall to the rest of the world.<p>France, if you want to have whatever little censored version of the internet locked in bureaucratic stranglehold, fine. But worldwide? GTFO.
Only thing that bother me is that this article revolve solely around google point of view.
The main spirit of the french RTBF law is to protect citizen privacy when published media can have negative effect on their life.<p>As for an example revenge porn, false public accusation or protection of witness are more in the spectrum of RTBF law than chinese-like censorship mentionned by Google.
And correct me if I'm wrong but french RTBF apply only to individuals, so how could they even compare this with state censorsphip?
It seems the judicial system in France could learn something from Colombia:<p><i>"Seeking to balance the right to clarify the record and the right to freedom of expression, the [highest Constitutional Court in Colombia] held that the newspaper was not required to remove the article. The court did require the newspaper to update the published information and use “robots.txt” and “metatags” to prevent the indexing of the content by Google due to the particularly serious nature of the crime and the severe personal consequences for Gloria."</i>
From a legal perspective, hypotheticals about the Internet becoming the union of all restrictions worldwide isn't even the best argument. If we accept that Google can be compelled by France to be forced to hide some content from the entire world, then we must also accept that Google can be compelled by some <i>other</i> jurisdiction to be <i>required</i> to make that content available. It's the same power. The Republic of X may make its propaganda mandatory and the Breakaway Republic of X may ban it, and I'm only being generic to be polite, I could easily name specific examples of this sort of thing if the French precedent is to be accepted.
Imagine this:<p>A website that fulfills a search query by searching google.com, then searching google.fr, then searching google.cn. It shows the results to the google.com query but gives badges to results based on which governments appear to be censoring them.
Something i don't get. Why ask google to modify its content depending on the domain name rather than the ip of the client ?<p>Ip geolocating can work to identify if someone lives in france. Client living in France => serve content based on french laws.
Good. The concept of RTBF as is currently implemented is insane, and it's good to see Google finally reacting like in that scene from Avengers:<p>"I recognize that the Council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it."<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEr7kiysrE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEr7kiysrE</a>
GEOip anyone ? Not sure if it's reliable or it's performance impact. In terms of bypassing it: it's either world-wide block outside of your juridiction or tough luck.
Do Google have any presence in France like offices or property which to give the judicial system in France jurisdiction to make this decision over the site?
Before mounting your US judicial high horse please remember that the US claims universal jurisdiction more than any other country in the world. As a US corporation please keep this in mind before you denigrate this judicial practices of foreign jurisdictions.
I view this as a very cynical attempt by Googles' counsel to prevent it from being governed by the laws of France. Associating the "right to be forgotten" with Russias' homophobic laws is clearly an attempt to frame the idea in the negative - when the right to be forgotten is far from the same kind of heinous cultural act as homophobia.<p>Very, very cynical - and Google have lost yet another point in their race to dominate culture as a corporate, global power..
I think it is crazy that we still cannot define individually how many bytes of data Google may store to profile us.<p>Note that it should not take many bits to profile us in a way that is useful, while still respecting our privacy. For example, with about 33 bits of information, one can identify any individual on this planet. With less than this amount, one can still put you in a class of individuals, such that you get relevant search results.