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On 18 May 2014 20:41, Martijn Grooten <martijn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > But do you really think 'relevance' and 'outdatedness' can be defined by > a court? I think they probably can't be defined by anyone else. Which is a non-answer, of course. :-) > Even if it could be, I'm not sure if I'd be happy with courts making > such decisions: taking a search engine to court is expensive and > complicated. What makes a search engine an especially expensive and complicated type of litigant? > And, for society as a whole, doesn't scale. *If* that's true, whose problem is it to remedy? > So you'll likely get the situation where only those with deep pockets > (large companies) and perhaps a few individuals will go to court. But this is not the case, as we have seen. > And > the sensible thing from a business point of view would be for the search > engines to avoid this by removing the information. Or not listing it in > the first place. Chilling effect and all that. >From the search engine's business point of view, I take it. There's that word again: removing, not qualified by "from the search results page". The consequence you posit is a non-sequitur. Which is not to say that there might not be some other reason to fear that this judgement entails that chilling effect, just that this formulation doesn't capture it. The judgement of the court is that justice, not personal interest alone, requires this particular "chilling"; by which I mean to say that chilling effects and slippery slopes are not what we're dealing with here. Freedom of expression is not in question, nor is good, valid, contemporary, relevant information being suppressed. Not all information is equally valid, and Google does not (nor does it claim to) assess validity, yet it is effectively authoritative, and nobody else but Google is in a position to correct bad search results. Of course, if Google wanted to open their system up (see my earlier list of gratis and libre technologies on which it is built and run), I'm sure the academic and FLOSS worlds could come up with something better than just trusting them to do their best, without damaging the reputation they've built for reliability. Perhaps in the end repeated unforeseen applications of justice principles will force them to do so, at least to some degree. > It's a complicated issue and I think both sides have strong arguments, > but I think Google's case is the stronger. Well, I don't, but I do agree it's not simple, obvious, or open-and-shut. As I said, my initial response was to side with Google. I also think it bears pointing out that there's really no blame being apportioned to Google, except for that one aspect that bedevils all closed/proprietary systems: the blocking of feedback and dialog across the boundaries of ownership and control. Google's real problem is that there is no (easy, open, licit) way for anyone outside Google -- perhaps especially a foreign non-techie -- to make Google commit changes it doesn't care to make, whether for good reasons, bad reasons or none, nor any way to fork a better solution in the face of recalcitrance. That's fine as long as Google never makes a mistake, but guess what? They did. (Yes, they did. The fact that the one result was correct did not sufficiently justify its sole inclusion. You don't agree, you offer testimony in the case to that effect. Believe me, Google covered that base and they failed to impress.) What avenue for effecting the change is left to someone who is excluded by the legal concepts of proprietary ownership of code and of code as a trade secret, except the courts? If you don't want someone using the courts to force you to change the software they use, don't deny them the four freedoms. What is free software? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html -- Phil Hudson http://hudson-it.no-ip.biz @UWascalWabbit PGP/GnuPG ID: 0x887DCA63 -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq