EU "Right To Be Forgotten" Hits Wikipedia

"It’s completely insane and it needs to be fixed"

[Samizdata]

Google is set to restrict search terms to a link to a Wikipedia article, in the first request under Europe's controversial new "right to be forgotten" legislation to affect the 110m-page encyclopaedia.

The identity of the individual requesting a change to Google's search results has not been disclosed and may never be known, but it is understood the request will be put into effect within days. Google and other search engines can only remove the link – as with other "right to be forgotten" requests, the web page itself will remain on Wikipedia.

Source: [theguardian.com...]

Presumably one can just use Wikipedia's built-in search box instead.

Jimmy Wales is quoted as saying "It’s completely insane and it needs to be fixed."

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[aristotle]

You don't need Google to remove embarrasing information about yourself from wikipedia. There have been numerous cases of politicians, celebrities, etc registering under false identities and "cleaning up" articles about themselves. In addition, wikipedia's own senior editors have accepted secret payments to do the same. There was a scandal about this about a year ago.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, is worried, though, that editors are being paid to write biased content. PR people or anyone looking to manage an aspect of public perception might take to Wikipedia to talk someone up, disparage an opponent, or generally frame information in an advantageous way. And this could be misleading to the roughly 500 million users who visit Wikipedia each month and trust that everything was written by volunteers. From [slate.com...]

So why bother with Google when you can do it yourself?

[Samizdata]

why bother with Google when you can do it yourself?

Because it is Wikipedia - anything you delete can easily be put back again by somebody else.

The point about the so-called "right to be forgotten" - or as one journalist dubbed it, the "right to impede investigation" - is that it only applies when a name is entered in a commercial search engine that operates in the EU.

Webmasters can have their content suppressed in this way, with no right of appeal.

And anyone searching from within the EU can have their results censored, likewise.

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[aristotle]

Yes I understand the difference between the two ways for hiding embarrassing information, either by excluding results from Google's SERPs or directly editing Wikipedia itself. I just wanted to point out that efforts to do this predate the "right to be forgotten" controversy.

Because it is Wikipedia - anything you delete can easily be put back again by somebody else

Yes that's true in theory. Unfortunately there are people who "stand guard" over certain Wikipedia pages and quickly delete or revert anything they don't like. This could even be a senior editor who is being secretly paid to do this by a politician or big corporation. These "guards" are usually a lot more determined to control the page than some outside individual who might try two or three edits and then give up.

[tangor]

Ultimately there will be two versions... the WWW and the EU... And until there is ONLY searches express to each version will there be a right to be forgotten. It's a hot mess, kiddies. A hot mess!

[Samizdata]

Ultimately there will be two versions... the WWW and the EU...

One of the many idiotic flaws with "the great firewall of Europe" is that anyone can bypass it very easily by going to the dotcom version of the search engine rather than the local one.

I think Jimmy Wales' analysis - "It’s completely insane and it needs to be fixed" - is spot on.

The ruling was made under a law that was written - as the judges acknowledged - before search engines existed.

The obvious solution is for the politicians to update the law.

They could call it "the first amendment" or something.

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