It’s possible to hide the URL entry line as an option. Some PCs are delivered that way, and if the user is like many, has no idea that such a thing exists, because they never entered an actual address. The only way they know to get to a web page is thru a search engine or a clickable link.
Can you show me a browser that has that option?
Personally, I can’t remember the last time I typed in a URL. If I need to open www.randomsite.com, I’ll type in “randomsite” and click the first Google link, which will inevitably be the site I’m looking for.
You publish in the UK- if it is true it is not defamatory. However if you do it to maliciously damage him when it is no longer appropriate (he got God twenty years ago and is now a born again angel) then you might be at risk- there is a balance- as SCOTUS has found on many occasions.
But this decision has nothing to do with Defamation, but to do with the illegal collection and storage of data in an automated system.
The US has taken an extreme position on information that is not shared with the rest of the world.
I believe most browsers have an option to hide the URL box, and many less computerate people use a browser solely via hyperlinks from their home page and other stored pages.
Which is one more step than necessary, and subject to errors (might not be the site you wanted), but that’s exactly what I was talking about.
Unless it is one paid for by advertising.
I was looking for Dynasty IT in my home town; Googled, clicked, dialled phone number, asked where IT tech was- it was a rival firm in the same city who had paid to show up when IT and my town name was clicked- one above the correct web site!
It’s eight characters fewer to type, and considering how typo-prone I am, that’s no small thing.
I also make sure it’s the right site before I click the link. I’m not stupid.
That’s an “experimental feature”.
It is moving toward touchscreen tablet style use. Typing is so much more difficult on a pop up keyboard so people will use it less and less.
That’s horrifying.
I “might be at risk” for reporting true facts since it’s no longer appropriate to mention it? You want to censor information for no better reason than ‘who needs pesky facts when balance and propriety call for ignorance?’
Are you out to ban the very idea of an inconvenient truth?
Good heavens, man, think of what you’re saying: you reached this decision, in support of this law, because of – what? Logic? Reason? Facts? Truth? Was it a matter of informed consent? Of enlightened self-interest? Was there a free exchange of ideas? Or did you make your choice after you were only allowed to hear half of the argument?
It has everything to do with quote-unquote defamation! If it weren’t for penalizing truthful information as slander or libel or whatever, collecting and storing data to that effect would be completely unproblematic!
Yeah, we’re in favor of it.
You missed the 1984 doublespeak point:
A displayed return for a searchable database is acceptable (say, for newspaper archives).
A displayed return for a searchable database is unacceptable because it’s a new publication (say, for Google).
If the European Law thinks those are two different things, the Law is a Ass.
To your other point of publications in the US being right wing: This is a reflection of what sells, and not whether or not speech is restricted. How about we get that crazy Westboro guy who was hollering about gay military funerals or something (I forget his exact point) to try hollering in Europe?
I know that the standard for libel is significantly lower in the UK than in the US, but is Pjen’s statement reflective of how the law is applied here, in print media as well?
Google’s entire business model is based on gathering information, so how are such standards as “reasonable use” and “needed for its business” to be determined? Is Google responsible for purging all links to inaccurate sources, or is this to be done at the request of affected parties on a case by case basis?
Partly. Truth is always a defense. Invasion of privacy is a tort that falls under the general heading of defamation but it doesn’t apply where someone simply reports the content of a public record (such as the conviction which appears to have been at issue here.)
Still, there likely have to be some standards there. Even if it’s a matter of public record, a journalist with a vendetta surely can’t make the front page story
It may be relevant information to publish if he was running for public office, or got arrested again, but I can’t imagine a newspaper getting away with that if they just ran the story for no reason when Mr. Smith hasn’t done anything wrong or notable for years.
US Law may or may not be perfect, but that also applies to other jurisdictions with slightly different formulations on rights. Most people are able to accept that considering various rights, some will conflict and different jurisdictions will make different decisions about the resolution of those conflicts.
Free Speech and Freedom of the Press are important, but these are preserved by more than simple laws on rights. The way that they are interpreted by judicial systems and the populace as a whole are more important than the nice words ina constitution. The US probably has the most extreme legal protection for Free Speech and Freedom of the Press in the world, yet in reality it is well down the table in the list of places where it is actually possible to have a Free Press and Freedom of Speech.
Additionally the history of the actual implementation of those constitutional principles over the last 250 years has been extremely doubtful- see the Sedition Acts etc listed above and consider the current problems with Snowden and Manning and the pressure on the US Media to disclose sources in the interests of “National Interest”. Such pressure was at the base of McCarthyism and other inroads made into those Freedoms in the doubtful interests of National Security.
Defamation is the publishing of false information that negatively affects a person’s standing in a community.
Privacy is a right to expect that information gathered by a third party and stored in an automated retrieval system and provided to others should be limited. This does not affect the Press, only the secondary storage of the information. This has always been the case as old newspapers are not required to be pulped just as old web pages are not required to be amended. What is banned is the illegal mass collection of data about individuals without due cause. Nothing in this stops the press investigating wrong doing. All this does is to say that a corporation must respect people’s privacy, and if it chooses to collect information in an automated manner then it must give a reason to do so. Google is a corporation and has created an automated system that collects information about third parties for no other reason than to make money for itself. It is bound by European Laws on Privacy such as the Data Protection Act. This is quite reasonable and is nothing to do with abrogation of Free Speech.
In the current case the Spanish Bankrupt will still be at risk of theNational Media publishing the fact that he was bankrupt thirty years ago; what he will not be at risk of is one of his neighbours Googling his name and discovering this via an automated system.
Even where it breaches people’s reasonable expectation of Privacy. One cannot be absolutist about rights- Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press have been and still are surrounded by exceptions and realities in the USA. It just so happens that different groups of people decide different rules.
Europeans are appalled by the Freedom of Speech being used as licence to abuse in the USA whereas Americans are appalled by lack of total Freedom of Speech to protect privacy in Europe and the Commonwealth.
Neither take on Freedom versus Privacy is necessarily correct, and there is probably no correct answer to satisfy every jurisdiction.
European Law does not say that. In the UK (I am not sure about other jursidictions but believe the law to be similar) Journalism is one of the exceptions- Journalists may collect information for the purpose of writing copy using an automated system (section 32(1) of the Act).
Google is not collecting information for journalistic purposes, but for general use, therefore it is not exempt. It is a corporation collecting information with the intention of making money from the process.