{"id":2147,"date":"2015-02-06T17:25:58","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T16:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/?p=2147"},"modified":"2023-12-06T10:34:05","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T09:34:05","slug":"final-report-by-advisory-council-to-google-on-right-to-be-forgotten-valuable-criteria-unbalanced-for-a-flawed-legal-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/2015\/02\/06\/final-report-by-advisory-council-to-google-on-right-to-be-forgotten-valuable-criteria-unbalanced-for-a-flawed-legal-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Final Report by Advisory Council to Google on &#8222;Right to be Forgotten&#8220;:  Valuable Criteria, Unbalanced &#038; for a Flawed Legal System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, on 5 February 2015, Google has published the <a title=\"externer Link\" href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/a\/google.com\/file\/d\/0B1UgZshetMd4cEI3SjlvV0hNbDA\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">report of the findings by its Advisory Council on the Right to be Forgotten<\/a>. The members of the Advisory Council are <em>Luciano Floridi<\/em> (University of Oxford), <em>Sylvie Kauffman<\/em> (Le Monde), <em>Lidia Kolucka-Zuk<\/em> (Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe), <em>Frank La Rue<\/em> (UN), <em>Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger<\/em> (former Federal Minister of Justice, Germany), <em>Jos\u00e9-Luis Pi\u00f1ar<\/em> (Universidad CEU), <em>Peggy Valcke<\/em> (University of Leuven), <em>Jimmy Wales<\/em> (Founder Wikimedia Foundation). Only\u00a0 three members of the Advisory Council (<em>Floridi, Valcke, Kauffman<\/em>) have not added a dissenting opinion to the final report.<\/p>\n<p><strong>List of Criteria for Handling Delisting Requests<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The core of the report is a catalogue of criteria that Google is advised to apply when an individual ask for links to be removed (\u201cdelisted\u201d) from the search index. These criteria range from the kind of person who asks for delisting (\u201cpublic figure\u201d or not) to the time elapsed since the event or the publication. The list of criteria is meticulous, and there is not a single criterion in the list that is not convincing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>No Guidance for a\u00a0Balance<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What is missing, however, is a clear idea how to rank and prioritize those criteria. What should the decision be if the article in dispute focusses on public health issues but contains false information? The Advisory Council regards \u201cpublic health\u201d as a strong argument against delisting while stating that \u201cfalse information \u2026 weighs strongly in favor of delisting\u201d.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Diffusion by National Courts<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">At the end of the day, striking the balance will be up to the courts of the 28 EU Member States. And the outcomes will vary as the rules on freedom of speech and freedom of\u00a0information vary.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Anglosaxon Approach<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Although most of the members of the Advisory Council are from the Continent, there is a clear over-emphasis on criteria in the report that are typically Anglosaxon. A lot of the criteria deal with \u201cpublic figures\u201d. Even the paragraphs on \u201ctime\u201d as a criterion focus mainly on cases of (former) \u201cpublic figures\u201d in various contexts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">While the Advisory Council has made great efforts on defining rules for \u201cpublic figures\u201d, the truthfulness (or falseness) of information only ranks as one (briefly mentioned) criterion amongst others. This strikes a\u00a0German lawyer as very odd because\u00a0according to\u00a0German law \u201cfalseness\u201d is a killer argument. Once it is established that information is false, it is illegal to spread such information whoever the person is that such information is about and however \u201cpublic\u201d that person is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dissent by <em>Wales<\/em>:<br \/>\nLaw Deeply Flawed When Forcing Commercial Company to Judge on Right of Expression and Privacy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The best part of the report is a short dissenting statement by Wikimedia\u2019s Jimmy Wales:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">&#8222;This report is a good faith effort under the limiting circumstance of the confused and selfcontradictory European Law to make recommendations to Google on compliance with that law. I am happy that the report explicitly notes &#8218;the Ruling does not establish a general Right to be Forgotten&#8216;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">I completely oppose the legal situation in which a commercial company is forced to become the judge of our most fundamental rights of expression and privacy, without allowing any appropriate procedure for appeal by publishers whose works are being suppressed. The European Parliament needs to immediately amend the law to provide for appropriate judicial oversight, and with strengthened protections for freedom of expression. Until this time, the recommendations to Google contained in this report are deeply flawed due to the law itself being deeply flawed.&#8220;<br \/>\n(<a title=\"externer Link\" href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/a\/google.com\/file\/d\/0B1UgZshetMd4cEI3SjlvV0hNbDA\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Report of the Advisory Council to Google on the Right to be Forgotten, page 27<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>Indeed: It should not be upto Google and other private companies to decide if information remains accessible. Instead, we need clear rules and procedures to be inserted in the darft regulation presently discussed in Brussels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, on 5 February 2015, Google has published the report of the findings by its Advisory Council on the Right to be Forgotten. The members of the Advisory Council are Luciano Floridi (University of Oxford), Sylvie Kauffman (Le Monde), Lidia Kolucka-Zuk (Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe), Frank La Rue (UN), [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2147"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7472,"href":"https:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions\/7472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cr-online.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}