So far the French Media ( article from "Le point"..in French )
[lepoint.fr...]
are ( correctly IMO ) agreeing with Google's stance..that if a country could censure what was seen by other countries, for example the tanks on Tian an men would be removed worldwide from search engine results..and NK would remove the internet that did not praise the "leader", from world wide access..

However..the French government is currently on holiday..as are the CNIL..French national events are ATM, dominated by the actions of farmers trying to get fairer prices ( the supermarkets impose prices which mean that the farmers make a loss ) for their produce from supermarkets ..and the farmers are "taking it out" on foreign imports ( in France, when in doubt "blame the foreigners" ) ..I expect that the government and the CNIL ( who as I have mentioned in other threads are basically the government's "proxy" in this and many other matters ) will no doubt wish to play the "nasty foreign Google" card..and hope to distract from their own failings in various domestic matters..

Popcorn is the same word in French..nowadays..

From a political point of view, this will not end well for either party.

I will be interested to see how this develops in the coming weeks and months.

It all stems back to the original ruling. It was badly thought through, and the authorities are now floundering having realised its weaknesses. I've said it before, and i'll keep on bashing the same drum: Politicians should stay away from areas they know nothing about.

Politicians should stay away from areas they know nothing about.

That would bar them ( 99.9% of all politicians , everywhere, all countries ) from discussing, legislating , pontificating, on just about everything from economics through education, business, defence, transport, health etc etc etc ..

They think that they know ( what is best for us, and especially for them ) about everything, or they listen to their civil servants, who assure them that they ( the civil servants and the politicians ) do..

part of me would love to see France erect some kind of chinese firewall and block all of google's domains apart from the european ones (i'm assuming that google has removed the URLs from all the EU ones)

i know that won't keep determined people from accessing them from within France, but it would still strike a blow against the google, who i definitely think need bringing down a peg or two

obviously it won't happen though... i'm just dreaming

Whenever Google strays into EU territory, they tend to get a slap. Not sure how this one will end but all I can say is
Vive La France !

I say the EU brings it to the US for a decision. If it is one country against an "American Business" operating on something called the WORLD WIDE WEB... ie, the inernet, which all counties good and bad, do their whatever they do....

In this case I'm, with G. Bring it on... as I do (G) have a way to solve that for 84 million PITAs). YOU CAN NO LONGER PLAY.

At some point a stand must be taken over this absurdity of embarrassing information. Libtards that G is, they do have some reality and a desperate need to be perceived as FULL INFORMATION TO ANYONE in their search. That's a business decision, not political, or rights, or morality.

IF THE WEB ever believes that G will CENSOR their search results because someone, or a country wants them to WORLD WIDE across all their results, then they, Google, will die.

<tangential question>
If you do something bad, and someone writes a book about it, can a French court order a French library to remove the book from its catalog after a few years? Not from their holdings, just from the publicly searchable catalog. How about moving the physical book from the public stacks (er... they do have public libraries in France don't they?) to a by-request-only area?
</tq>

If you do something bad, and someone writes a book about it, can a French court order a French library to remove the book from its catalog after a few years? Not from their holdings, just from the publicly searchable catalog. How about moving the physical book from the public stacks (er... they do have public libraries in France don't they?) to a by-request-only area?

Yes, they can and have. Books have been banned by governments since there have been books. However, in this instance it is might be more about the laws surrounding defamation and privacy.

This is not an endorsement for banning books.

I'm not asking about banning books, fer hevvins sakes. Didn't I make that clear enough? I'm asking about the book's record in library catalogs. That's the nearest analogy to suppressing a page from search results while allowing the page itself to exist. Another close equivalent would be allowing a publisher to continue printing a book, while keeping its information out of universal directories such as Books In Print.

I am definitely with Google on this. If France can ask for this, why can Saudi Arabia not ask for all websites that break their laws (Christian websites, gay websites, feminist websites..... and a LOT more) to be dropped from searches on google.com?

That's not what they're doing though. They don't want to change what appears on Google.com for the entire world, just for the ones residing in Europe. That is my understanding of it.
Americans and everyone else will still have their normal Google.com

Google have already been tailoring the results for EU visitors on Google.com anyway, through personalised search (as they do for every other visitor who wants it), so it's not a big stretch for them to tailor it a bit more and drop a list of URLs.

i don't blame the French for being annoyed, because as it stands at the moment Google are insisting they have complied, when they blatantly haven't — not when every French person can still see the URLs on Google.com in France.

The real stupidity of this law is that it does nothing to the original article. If it is ok for the publisher to leave the offending article online, and it is ok for any number of popular outlets to highlight the article then how can it be illegal for a search engine to display it?

I apologize Lucy24. I did not fully digest your comment (obviously).

@toldi, I think the courts would throw out any law that required the material to be removed from the original site (I recall and earlier ruling point that way), so removing it from search engines is the limit of what they can do. Does this fall within the jurisidtion of ECJ, ECHR or both?

@londrum, that is not what the linked article, or anything else I can find, says. CNIL's own wording is vague "removed from all extensions"

It is scary that so many people are using this - especially given what we already know about the sort of people using it.