Comment Re:pure political bullshit (Score 1) 199
Right so I'm not actually wrong then am I? You're agreeing with me that the case clearly allows public record to remain, but commercial use beyond that not to. Again, this is exactly as it's always been.
You now have directly contradicted yourself in your responses to me. I even quoted it above to make it easy for you.
I know exactly how indexing works on a technical level, but "data processing" is a specific term recognised in law and what Google is doing is classed as data processing...It's pretty clear that Google is taking the data and processing it to produce search results based on it. That is like it or not, a form of processing as recognised in law.
As I said in my last response, Google's actions likely are considered processing of personal data by a law that written for computer systems prior to the open Internet and free Internet search engines. But, comparing what they do to a credit processing agency indicates you don't understand how one or both works.
Well no, because libraries are not:
a) Processing the data
b) Using the data for profit
c) Are recognised as an institution for storage of public record
No combination of these is breached by libraries, whereas they are by Google, and that's the problem.
In my example, they would be processing the data more so than an Internet search engine, storing as well as indexing the source data. I'm not aware of the specific exemptions that you claimed in points b and c. Perhaps you could point me to where those are clarified in law?
You only think this is illogical precisely because you don't understand European data protection law (or perhaps data protection law in general) and the businesses I describe. Personal data is a well defined thing in law, and so is data processing, unfortunately whatever you may or may not think of the law the fact is that the data was clearly defined as personal data, and Google clearly was processing it as defined in law, and Google clearly did not fall under any of the exemptions (e.g. law enforcement).
Again, I clearly addressed this in my previous post.
I actually do not think you understand how credit reference agencies work, because this is almost exactly the same thing. What they do is gather personal data in public record such as the data mentioned in this case - data on bankruptcies and so forth, and make that searchable, so that 3rd party organisations can perform a search on individuals and acquire this data to perform credit scoring and so forth. I'm sure now I've explained the way in which they work you can see the similarities no?
Credit agencies exist solely to sell access to personal financial records. Much of the data they collect and provide for a fee is not otherwise accessible and would not be considered public data. They do not simply index data held by others; they actually aggregate and store the data. The agencies have quasi-official standing as agents of record for citizen's financial history and credit worthiness. None of this is like what Google or Bing does, at all. Continuing to insist that they are similar in any real fashion is ridicules.
Google is a generic search engine that can find this and other data, credit reference bureaus are specific search engines that find just this type of data.
You again demonstrate a total lack of understanding between storing and holding the actual data and indexing someone else's data.
Early 80s is 15 - 20 years too early. The UK's data protection act was drafted in 1998 and became law in 2000, other European ones around a similar period. I have no idea why you cherry picked 1980 when no such data protection act even existed then and when it's so long before the laws were made - they were made well after the internet came to be. It seems to be quite an assumption you've jumped to there that they were developed before these problems were understood.
The EU's directive was adopted in 1995. It essentially codified the Council of Europe's 1981 convention on automatic processing of personal data. And even at 1995, the Internet was in its infancy.
There is a major update to the legislation going through the EU currently and that's the path by which Google should argue for it's exemption if it feels it's justified.
I agree that at this stage an explicit exemption for search engines that store only metadata is appropriate, but you seem to be suggesting that that Google was off-base to argue their position in court.. Surely that isn't your position?
You've got to separate technological idealism from both the reality of writing law, and with the reality of democracy whereby a majority of others may treat privacy with much great priority than you do.
How do you know what priority I put on privacy? And, it is humorous that you think that EU directives actually have any relationship to what a majority of citizens want or represent a democratic statement.
