[Fuxy]

It's also useless the content isn't removed it is just impossible to find in search engines.

If You can make a decentralized search engine that indexes everything no exceptions you would still find it.

Or you could make your own. It doesn't make it impossible to find just impossible for the average person.

[blazespin]

Which is really the idea. The law isn't about squelching free speech, it's just trying to keep this information from being so easily available. It's the right balance.

I find it so incredibly hard to believe that so many people are falling for this "poor-us" google routine. I just shake my head in bewilderment every time I hear it.

[ewillbefull]

> The law isn't about squelching free speech, it's just trying to keep this information from being so easily available.

You're just mincing words here. There are profound speech arguments to be made when someone is coerced or threatened for publishing _facts_. It is the same nanny-state crap that Europe invokes when it criminalizes offending people, and they have an army of people like you to jump on their bandwagon.

The ruling is technologically illiterate. It fails to appreciate the growing ability for anyone to access and index public information as time goes on. It fails to appreciate its jurisdiction and effectiveness. It fails to make sound rational justification that separates the role of a newspaper from a news aggregator.

Most important of all, it gives the government an enormously broad -- and practically limitless -- ability to remove the expression and dissemination of information based on purely subjective and even temporal characteristics. Europe's freedom of expression laws are a joke with endless carve-outs for "public stability" and "offense" which will only become increasingly useful tools to regulate and censor legitimate public discourse.

Too bad for you, these laws won't work and when they fail it will be embarrassing. In the short term, enjoy the further rot of economic growth in the region due to compliance costs of this and other ridiculous judgments.

[krbbltr]

You sound bitter. Why do you get so worked up over 'nanny-state crap' that's going on on the other side of the world? Business interests in the EU and don't like to put in the extra effort? Or do you just enjoy that mode of righteous indignation?

I find it amusing that – even taking the Google shills out of the picture –, most of the 'debate' around this topic is along the lines of Americans preaching to Europeans about how they're 'doing it wrong', often with emotionally charged language, just like your comment here. Ever thought that Europeans just might have some slightly different values than you do?

[mike_hearn]

I live in Europe, was born in Britain, and I think this is a bad ruling that makes the EU look like a bad joke.

Laws that can only be enforced by building a massive system of internet censorship akin to China's are indeed "doing it wrong".

Happy now?

[krbbltr]

You're entitled to your opinion, but a single comment on a US-centric discussion forum does not convince me that it's a majority opinion as far as Europeans go. My observations so far indicate the opposite.

[Fuxy]

As a European myself the request of the citizen for the removal of the content was legitimate you can't have past problems looming over you your entire life and certain things are just too personal and shouldn't be so easy to find to begin with.

I don't want a potential google search to reveal I got my home repossessed for instance.

The employer could take advantage of this by offering you a lower wage since you're desperate it's more likely you will take it or not hire you at all.

However the way the court choose to handle this was completely wrong. This shouldn't be handled at search engine level but at the publishing website level.

The ability of anybody requesting content to be removed from the internet should be very limited in the types of things they can have removed and rigorously monitored by a court of law.

Plus there should be a private database containing the Names of the people who had content removed and what was removed.

That would discourage political reasons since the log of their activity exists even if the content doesn't.

[mike_hearn]

But haven't you just been assuming that anyone who is against this ruling is American?

[ewillbefull]

You going to have to come up with a better defense; the "it's just a different culture" and "you wouldn't understand" and "our values are different" does NOT insulate you from criticism. Your 'balance' is poorly reasoned, and should be openly mocked and despised by anyone in western society.

This ruling affects everybody because of its balkanization effect on the Internet. Other than that, I just feel bad for Europeans who throw fundamental human rights away in favor of populism.