Just Say "NON!" - France Demands Right of Global Google Censorship
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001106.html
I've been waiting for this, much the way one waits for a violent case
of food poisoning.
France is now officially demanding that Google expand the hideous EU
"Right To Be Forgotten" (RTBF) to Google.com worldwide, instead of
just applying it to the appropriate localized (e.g. France) version of
Google.
(
http://www.wsj.com/articles/french-privacy-watchdog-orders-google-to-expand-right-to-be-forgotten-1434098033
)
And here's my official response as a concerned individual:
To hell with this.
That's nowhere near as strong a comment as I'd really like to make,
but this is a general readership blog and I choose to avoid the use of
the really appropriate invectives here. But man, I could justifiably
pile on enough epithets here to melt your screens before your eyes.
A key reason why I've been warning all along about the disastrous
nature of RTBF is precisely this "camel's nose under the tent"
situation. Giving in to localized censorship demands from the EU
and/or member countries was bound to have this result.
What's worse, if France or other EU countries get away with this
attempt to impose their own censorship standards onto the entire
planet, we can be sure that government leaders around the world will
quickly follow suit, demanding that Google globally remove search
results that are politically "inconvenient" -- or religiously
"blasphemous" -- or, well, you get the idea. It's a virtually
bottomless cesspool of evil censorship opportunities.
It's bad enough when the ever more censorship and surveillance loving
Western leaders have this kind of power. But how about Vladimir Putin,
or China's rulers, or Iran's Supreme Leader as GLOBAL censors?
It wouldn't be long before it would seem that every search on any
controversial topic might as well be replaced with a "404 Not found"
page -- a rush to lowest common denominator mediocrity, purged of any
and all information that government leaders, politicians, or
bureaucrats would prefer people not be able to find and see.
I've written and said so much about RTBF for years that it feels like
an endless case of "Groundhog Day" at this point -- e.g. early on in
"The 'Right to Be Forgotten': A Threat We Dare Not Forget" (2/2012)
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000938.html ) and most recently in a
one hour live RTBF hangout video discussion (about a month ago).
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSdhMfsxWOs )
And I'm certainly not alone in these concerns. Yet we continue to be
sucked down this rathole, now with governments using overblown
security concerns as an excuse to try justify even broader search
engine censorship across a vast range of topics.
So far, Google has resisted the concept of RTBF being applied
globally. I not only applaud their stance on this, but I strongly urge
them to stand utterly firm on this issue.
RTBF even in localized forms is bad, but if countries had the ability
to impose their individual censorship regimes onto the entire globe's
population, we'd be -- with absolutely no exaggeration -- talking
about an existential threat not just to "free speech" but to
fundamental communications and information rights as well.
This cannot be tolerated.
Non! Nein! Nahin! Nyet!
Just say NO!
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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