Posts by Eric Anderson

Researchers defend Facebook emoto-furtling experiment

Re: Psych(o) researchers

If it makes you feel any better, I know a bunch of psych researchers, and all the discussion around this was "wait, how the hell does that comply with ethics standards?" not "yeah, that's awesome, I don't see a problem here."

When PR backfires: Google 'forgets' BBC TV man's banker blog post

Yank commentator here. There's always more than one question: This specific case may have turned on jurisdiction (because "we don't like that law" isn't usually a very successful legal argument), and it's pretty reasonable that the court found the way it did. But that doesn't mean there isn't *also* a public policy question of "well, is that a good law?"

Re: To what end?

The measure isn't specific to Google (or even just search engines). In principle, the requester has every right to ask for the original data to be removed, and having third parties like Google get rid of links and caches is secondary.

I believe what makes it weird is that the original copy (say, the article or blog post) may have different legal status than those duplicates and links. I've forgotten the exact terminology, but I believe it's pretty possible for an article to have special protection as journalism, for example, but a search engine's data about that article not to. I'm not sure how much of that is about the nature of the data, versus how it's being used, versus the nature of the company holding it.

That makes no sense

I'm pro-EU, but that doesn't make any sense. Are you arguing that it *is* up to Google, or that it's *not*? Because you seem to have made both claims.

The EC's fact sheet ( http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_data_protection_en.pdf ) FAQ on the ruling suggests that the company to whom the request was made (Google) is responsible for making a determination about each request, and then acting on it. That kind of suggests that -- whether or not Google made the correct decision on this case -- they're doing exactly what they're supposed to. I'm not sure what you're even suggesting -- that they should *always* deny requests and pass the buck up to the court system? I don't know what the penalties are, but I'm pretty sure that would not be accepted as complying with the law.