经济学人下载:谷歌向欧盟低头 公民可以要求Google将你被遗忘

Google and the EU
谷歌向欧盟低头

On being forgotten
公民可以要求Google将你“被遗忘”

The right to be forgotten sounds attractive. But it creates more problems than it solves.
这个可以申请被谷歌“遗忘”的权利现如今看来十分具有吸引力。但是这却使得其解决的问题难以覆盖更多的新问题。

MAX MOSLEY enjoyed sexual practices which many might find odd. But that was his business, so when in 2008 a now-defunct British tabloid wrongly dubbed him a participant in a “sick Nazi orgy”, he sued it for breaching his privacy and won. The allegations, however, remain on the internet. If you type in “Max Mosley”, Google helpfully tries to complete the search: the first four options are “video”, “case”, “pictures” and “scandal”. He—and many others who feel their lives are tainted by the smears and irrelevancies which search engines link to their names—want redress.
马科斯·莫斯利对性惯行十分陶醉，而这却会成为人们眼中的怪异举止和癖好。但是这是他个人私事，因此在2008年，一个现已停止经营的英国小报错误授予其“病态纳粹狂欢者”的“荣誉”称号，对此他提出起诉，一纸将该报刊告上法庭，宣称其侵犯了自己的个人隐私，并最终获得胜诉。然而，这一事件的指控，在互联网上依然得以保留。如果你轻触鼠标，键入“马科斯·莫斯利”，谷歌会有效地弹出所有关于马科斯的相关搜索：最前的四个搜索结果就是“视频”、“案件”、“艳照”以及“绯闻”。马科斯以及和他一样倍感自己生活被一些将其名字与名誉污点以及无关事宜相捆绑的搜索引擎给抹黑了—他们需要匡正。

Many European politicians are sympathetic to this. Countries such as France and Britain have long allowed the erasure of criminal records once convictions are spent. The European Parliament has backed a “right to be forgotten”, though to become law it would need the approval of all the European Union's 28 member states. Mr Mosley has won the first round of a legal battle in Germany to block the images appearing on Google searches there.
很多欧洲政客对于这一点也深表赞同。诸如法国和英国这些欧洲国家有很长一段历史时期允许一旦判决罪被定夺，犯罪记录被删除。欧洲委员已经开始重新审视“公民‘被遗忘'的权利”，尽管要成为法律文书仍然需要得到所有欧盟28个成员国的共同认可。莫斯利已经在德国的合法战争中赢得了第一轮的胜利，屏蔽了出现在谷歌的搜索结果上的相关照片。

Now the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the EU's highest court, has boosted this cause in a landmark case (see article). A Spanish lawyer, Mario Costeja González, sued Google because its search results linked his name to a newspaper article from 1998 about a now-resolved lawsuit. The court ruled that Google was a “data controller” under the 19-year-old European law on data protection, which gives individuals strong rights over data that others hold on them. It said Google could be required not to display links to information that is “inadequate, irrelevant...or excessive”, given the purpose for which they are processed, and the time elapsed. Individuals will be able to appeal to their national data watchdogs if they are turned down.
现在欧洲法院，即欧洲最高法院已经在努力促成此案例作为划时代的案例。一个西班牙的律师，马里奥科特加冈萨雷斯，因谷歌搜索结果将其姓名与一报纸1998年报道的一起现今已经结案的诉讼案件的文章链接在一起，而起诉了谷歌。法庭根据欧洲的一项数据保护法律判定谷歌的行为属于“数据控制”，该法律已实行19年之久，规定个人用户们享有对于别人持有关于个人数据的极大掌控权利。法院裁决谷歌应该被要求不再将其链接信息展示出来，比如那些“不充足、无关紧要或是过度夸大”的信息，只用给用户们希望获得的信息即可，并且时间也会使人们淡忘掉这一切。个人用户将会向他们国家数据监测者提起申诉，以查看是否这些内容已被关掉。

The court's desire to protect victims of misunderstanding and malice is understandable. But a right to be forgotten would be hard to implement. Even if Google is made to censor its search results in Europe, in America the First Amendment's free-speech provision usually trumps privacy concerns. With modest technical know-how, European internet users will be able to make American-style searches. Europe will hardly want to build a Chinese-style firewall to prevent that.
法院期望能够保护那些被大众误解和仇恨的受害者的这一愿望是可以理解的。但被遗忘的权利将很难实现。即使谷歌在欧洲、在美国被审查其搜索结果，宪法第一修正案的自由言论的规定通常胜过隐私问题。仅仅需要使用谦和的技术诀窍，欧洲的互联网用户将能成为美式的自由网页搜索者。欧洲将很难想建立起一个中国式的防火墙，以防止这一问题的产生。

And even if it were practicable to force companies to erase the past, it would do more harm than good. It would hamper everyone interested in finding out inconvenient truths about those who would like their past covered up. The ECJ ruling makes allowance for a public-interest defence, but it will mostly make commercial sense for Google and other search engines to take down material as soon as someone complains, rather than to weigh the merits of each case.
而且，即使迫使企业抹去过往历史的这一做法是可行的，将会造成弊大于利。它会妨碍每个人去查明他们所热衷寻求的不易真相，而这一真相是部分人希望掩盖的关于自己的过往。欧洲法院的裁决考虑到公众利益的捍卫和保护，但其主要将会使得具有商业意识的谷歌和其他搜索引擎一旦出现有人抱怨的情况，就撤销相关信息，而不是权衡每种情况下的利弊。

Watch out for silent encroachments
留心无声的侵犯

The right to be forgotten would also undermine the internet's great strength. The internet is, in effect, a library of unimaginable size—full, as all libraries are, of news, gossip, archive material and other stuff which may to varying degrees be irrelevant, wrong or mad. It has made the best and worst of such information more freely available than ever before. Search engines should be like library catalogues—comprehensive and neutral, and without fear or favour of what the contents may reveal, or how they may be used. It should be up to individuals, not governments, to distinguish what is right or wrong, useful or immaterial. People should be wary of ceding the power to make that judgment, even to a court that thinks hard about it and backs the underdog. As James Madison said, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
被遗忘的权利也将破坏互联网的强大力量。互联网，实际上是难以想象的大规模图书库，正如图书馆一样，其中库含了几乎所有的内容，包括新闻、八卦、档案材料，并可能与其他内容在不同程度上是不相干的、错误的或者疯狂。它使这些无论最佳还是最糟糕的信息，比以往任何时候更可自由查看。搜索引擎应该像图书馆目录一样——全面、中立，而不用担心或是偏爱可能会透露的内容，或者是它们该如何被使用。它应该是由个人而不是政府来决定，要分清哪些是对还是错，有用或是不重要的信息。人们应该警惕割让作出这样的判断的权力，甚至是对于法院都认为很难对此作出判断或是支持劣势者。正如詹姆斯·麦迪逊说，“我相信仍存在很多当权者逐步无声地侵犯民众自由的例子，这些例子比暴力和突然的强取豪夺更为猖獗”。