Tokyo court orders Google to delete data linking man to crime

I disagree that search results can infringe on someone's rights. It's no more than just a list of various sources (that might infringe on rights). It's like holding a newspaper liable for match-fixing simply for reporting the score of a fixed match. I think the court should simply have said, while the results themselves are not illegal per se, there are instances where the harm of a particular search result can outweigh the good, and in those limited cases the courts have discretion to order the results deleted.

combinibentoOct. 11, 2014 - 07:35AM JST I disagree that search results can infringe on someone's rights. It's no more than just a list of various sources (that might infringe on rights).

I agree. The auto-complete ruling was justified as it "suggested" a result, and that would be seen as actively slandering someone, much like a newspaper spread a story that was false.

However, in this case preventing anyone who actively searches for the person's name is very different. Those websites slandering the individual still exist. Removing the search result doesn't change that, and there are more search engines than just Google.

Unfortunately I also can see that this is the only practical way to deal with malice on the internet. Someone spreading malicious rumours could easily generate a dozen or more sites with the rumour repeated, and put a few copies on archiving sites like "wayback machine". In short they can anonymously replicate the story until it appears to be true, and open more sites as each one gets closed down (each time at tremendous legal expense to the victim).

Sadly this sort of malicious activity is probably the greatest threat to the freedom of the internet, since it creates just this sort of situation where censoring search results is legally and morally justifiable.

The purpose of this ruling is be to prevent irrelevant information from being displayed for a particular search term, and not to delete other data pertaining to the plaintiff.

Well, I don't like censorship on any grounds. They always start with these "Oh well" cases and move onwards.

Maybe a better idea would be to use Google's Knowledge thingee, make an article on this guy being cleared, and make sure it shows up on the top. The old articles can be moved to the rear - it is a historical fact that he was charged, and it seems fair for him to have to live with that.

well actually censorship is already occurring, the fact that there is the possibility that you can get incorrect data about yourself removed is a positive thing.- about the only positive thing lately .

thought there are other search engines most of the world uses google, bing is the far second runner. and the others trail far far behind

this ruling is a good one, for the short time we'll see this in practice, governments will change it back again - or put in place caveats that they will have full access and the rest of the world will not see the results.

it will be interesting to see what changes to the search clients occur in the next 3-5 years

Now it's incumbent upon the judges to order Japanese publishers of legal case histories to recall from purchasers all hardcopies of their products that incorrectly imply the guy to be "guilty".

@praack I think people should have a "possibility of getting incorrect data about yourself removed". I.e. you should ask Google nicely. Court orders go too far. Next you will have governments trying to get Wikileaks removed from Google search results.

Everyone should have the right to be deleted from Google or any search engine without going to court!

turbotsatOct. 11, 2014 - 10:58AM JST Now it's incumbent upon the judges to order Japanese publishers of legal case histories to recall from purchasers all hardcopies of their products that incorrectly imply the guy to be "guilty".

Wow turbotsat, way to misread the article and resume slandering this poor guy...

linking the claimant to a crime he did not commit

He did not commit the crime, there are not case histories implying the guy is guilty, because lawyers know that publishing that would get them sued penniless for slander and harassment.

You, sadly, cannot be sued because you're hiding behind a pseudonym on the internet... which is a real crying shame.

An interesting read on this topic:

http://time.com/3490585/google-eric-schmidt-wikileaks-julian-assange/

Two points come to mind:

1) Tokyo has no juristiction over Google (or the internet as a whole). What can they do to enforce this?

2) Google's results (the unpaid ones anyway) are themselves a result of what people search for and actually click. The more people that search for X and click website Y, the more relevant google's software believes they are and therefore the more likely X and Y will appear in search results.

While it certainly is within google's power to do this, it defeats the purpose of a search engine. If people are searching for this, they obviously want to know what(if any) connection the guy has to this situation, and not his facebook page or whatever.

If people can't find what they want, they will go to another search engine which results in a loss (albiet abysmally small) to google.

Tl;dr version: search engines are not responsible for providing truth. Just places that might be relevant to what you are looking for.

Tokyo has no juristiction over Google (or the internet as a whole). What can they do to enforce this?

Google has offices in Japan, and does business in Japan. The courts can impose penalties that would have to be paid by Google in Japan. The other option being that Google chooses not to do business in Japan, but that would be more detrimental to Google than it would be to Japan.

Various news reports indicate Yahoo won two similar cases in Japan, Google claims no jurisdiction because its servers are in USA, Google has ignored a previous similar injunction in a Japanese case, and similar case or cases have been overturned on appeal in Japan.

I am not going to trust comments that says they got info from google. Someone googled and told me that Vegas has more suicide than entire Japan recently in an article in Politics board. So, never trust any data obtained from google?