They put about as much consideration into it as you put into paying for your tripod hosting!

I would think that the server-side perl bit was probably to detect/analyse the content of the referring page so that the ad presented was, at least tangentially, related to the page that "launched" it. Otherwise, the ad would have had to be specifically selected by the code inserted into each launching page (a heck of a lot of work). Other alternatives would have been to either use the same, static page for all, or randomly select the target ad, both of which are likely to eliminate any chance of the ad being even remotely related to the content of the launching page.

That all being said, although I work with some very smart coders, I am not well versed in programming. As such, the assumptions on which the above is based could well be far off the mark!

In other words, this was a giant leap in the direction of those who would previously have been considered as their customers (those publishing sites via the "free" hosting) essentially being transformed even further into the product to be sold to their real customers (the advertisers). Sure, banner ads meant that this was already the case, but it's hard to argue that this didn't make matters worse.

It can be argued that they did this as the only way to keep their service "free", but it could equally be argued that making funding through advertising so much easier has eliminated the incentive for the industry to think outside the box to find a better way. Are we really expected to believe that, without pop-up advertising to promote psychological separation between the advert and the page, all the advertisers would have fled the industry and free hosting would have simply ceased? I may be overly idealistic, but I prefer to believe that, if advertising revenue had dropped to near zero, the industry would have found another way to achieve it.

WRONG!

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/c...

From the above link:

In other words, even if you have a tuner, as long as it is not used, you DO NOT need a TV license to cover it. Should you, however, watch any content online at the same time as it is being broadcast, you DO need a license, even if you do not own a single piece of kit with a tuner in it.

It should be noted that when you buy any equipment with a tuner in it (TV / STB / PCTV device / whatever) the retailer will normally take your name and address (I believe this is by law) and this information is communicated to the TV Licensing bureau. If, when they receive this notification, they do not have on record any current valid TV license for that property, they will send out a letter asking you to either provide evidence that you have a license, buy one, or make a declaration that neither you, nor anyone in the property, watch or record TV as it is being broadcast, regardless of whether it is via the equipment you bought or some other method (e.g. online). As we keep our license up-to-date (My wife's daughter lives with us. It would seem that not having the capability to watch the latest reality-TV/whatever-other-crap-is-on is almost considered cruelty by many these days!), I have no idea what happens if you fail to respond to such a letter (I only received one of these letters because we bought a new TV the day we moved, and my change of address notification and their letter crossed in the mail).

Except that in the UK we have a piece of legislation called the Data Protection Act, which I believe is our ratification of a piece of EU legislation (the name of which I don't have time to look up. Ironically, Google may be of assistance here), so it is relevant to the discussion at hand. It places restrictions on what data processors are permitted to do with so-called PII (Personally Identifiable Information), particularly where it involves sharing with other corporate entities, and places certain responsibilities upon the processor with regards to the safekeeping of that data. IANAL, but I think it could be argued that this legislation may make it an offence to disclose to the publisher that a takedown request has been made. At the very least, it is likely to limit how much Google et al can disclose about the request. It may also be something of a grey area in cases where the mere existence of a takedown request would be enough to identify the requestor.

Simply put, there are so many pieces of legislation that have the potential to be, perhaps unintentionally, interrelated that they form a very tangled web (no pun intended) and, as such, complying with one may put you at risk of breaching another unless you are very careful about exactly how you comply.

Flawed analogy!

Signboards are there for everyone to see, whether they are searching for you or not. Search results do, at least, require that a search parameter is entered. No one is suggesting that Google is spamming their advertising feeds with links to articles covered by this.

Your post does, however, raise another important question... Does this legislation require that Google filter paid adverts where the link points to articles that would be covered by this, and if so, are they required to reimburse those who paid for the adverts?

Privatising the judiciary? Now THAT's a scary thought! Especially when you consider a lot of the discussions in these forums complaining about "evil" corporations.

Are you suggesting that Google include the full search results, but when you click on one that is covered by this they send you to a different address to the real result (I.e. one showing the "blocked" message), or are you suggesting that they send you to the right address, but somehow dynamically "hack" the target server and replace the legitimate content with the "blocked" message? (In other words, did you forget that, unlike when discussing YT, Google is not the content's host in these situations?)

Oops, my apologies. It would appear that I am misunderstanding your comment (I knew I should have topped up my caffeine levels before reading /. !!!).

If I'm understanding you right then I agree with your assertion that links should only be blocked where the person's identity is the search parameter. I thought you had meant that the results should not be blocked, regardless of the search parameters, as the articles that they point to could have ongoing legitimate interest for other reasons.

True, but do your SC judges have a vote in congress? Until recently, ours had the equivalent!

Fair point. To be fair though, I do know the difference. Low caffeine levels, rushing, and not proofreading before submitting (Damn you, mobile interface. No preview!) were the cause of this screw-up. It's also worth noting that there WAS an overlap between the legislative and judicial arms (the creation of the UKSC appears to have mainly been intended to address this), but there REMAINS an overlap between the executive and the legislative arms in that ministers are each members of one or other of the houses of parliament and retain their voting rights. As such, the lines between the arms were so blurred that the whole damn construct may as well have been one giant amorphous blob (I'm not even sure if there was anything explicitly preventing a serving "Law Lord" from being a minister as well, other than the fact that the workload would probably have got in the way)!

That's overly defensive. The question, as asked, is not accusing, nor implying, that the notification of the website publishers is wrong. The aim is probably to determine whether they considered doing this and, if they didn't, was it for technical (too difficult), financial (too expensive) or legal (concerned that as there is nothing currently in the law compelling them either way on this that no action is the safest option). Alternatively, if they did, this could be used to justify compelling them to continue doing so (so that the linked article can be amended/removed) and, if the legal basis that they have been using thus far is flawed, enact retrospective legislation to protect them from any repercussions of doing so.

On the other hand, I may be crediting those asking the questions with an undeserved degree of rationality and confidence. It's certainly a weird feeling, reading a comment on /. and finding that my opinion on the matter appears to be LESS cynical that theirs!

My understanding is that this (Separation of Powers) is explicitly defined and codified in the USA. In the rest of the world, that may be the intent, but there can often be some overlap. As an example, until the (fairly) recent creation of the UK Supreme Court, the highest court in the UK were the so-called "Law Lords", who were serving members of the House of Lords (one of the houses of Parliament). As such, whilst it may not be an executive agency of the government, where any overlap exists it can still be argued that there is some degree of agency between the executive and the judiciary. Additionally, within the EU, there is the further complication of the relationship between the judiciaries, executives and legislatures of the member states and those of the EU as a whole (especially as there have been plenty of cases where they do not agree!).

Fine. This works for online publications published within the jurisdiction where the law exists. However, how about:

Online publications published outside of the jurisdiction. How do you compel them to remove this content?
Offline publications. Are you suggesting that there be some way of tracking every last copy of every hard-copy publication so that when "x amount of time" has passed, someone can be sent to where each affected copy is, with powers to seize, edit (tricky, as most, if not all, are printed on both sides!) and return it. At present, it may not be searchable, but if someone had the time and inclination to trawl hard copies/microfiches at a suitably equipped library, they could turn up all sorts of reports of content talking about arrests without subsequent conviction going back decades.
Publications where the publisher has gone out of business.
I do, however, agree that morally this is something that should fall on the publisher to put right. Technically, however, this is unlikely to be reasonably achieved. As has been said throughout this discussion, for most people, if they can't find it with their search engine of choice, they will never see the information. As such, whilst it is placing an administrative burden on a party who had no part in causing the situation, tasking the search engines with filtering these links is the most cost-effective solution. Whether it should be possible, where the publisher is within the jurisdiction and still in business, they should be compelled to take some action themselves (and maybe even bear some of the costs incurred by the search engines in administering their part of the process) is a separate, although no less valid, debate.

This all being said, however... how do we propose that things like the Internet Archive be affected, should such a law ever see the light of day in the USA (or even now, bearing in mind it can be accessed from within the EU)?

Your question can be read one of two ways. Either you mean "Can an applicant with an unspent conviction not declare it and get away with it?" or you mean "If an employee has a spent conviction and is not obligated to declare it, is there anything in place to prevent him/her from declaring it and/or anything in place to ensure that the potential employer can be forced to disregard it?"

If the former:
The short version - in non-high-risk jobs, it depends if the employer chooses to carry out checks (if no, getting away with it is easy. If yes, getting away with it is not so easy). The long version - In high-risk roles, it should not be possible. My understanding of it (and remember, IANAL) is that if you are explicitly asked about convictions on a normal (i.e. for a non-high-risk role) application, you only have to declare "unspent" convictions. If your employer then applies for a criminal records check (which, as I understand it, any employer can do with the individual's consent) it will only return "unspent" convictions. "Spent" convictions remain on record. They are not expunged. If you are applying for a higher-risk role, your employer may have the right to request a more complete criminal records check, under which circumstances ALL records are returned, "spent" and "unspent". Indeed, if you are applying for a high-risk role, my understanding is that the application form MUST make clear that you need to declare both "spent" and "unspent" convictions and that (unlike in a non-high-risk role, where the criminal records check is optional) the company MUST have you vetted by the DBS (Disclosure & Barring Service. I believe that this replaces the CRB - Criminal Records Bureau). In low risk roles, however, because formal checks are optional, it has the potential to be relatively easy.

If the latter:
I'm not aware of anything being in place, other than human nature of a person not normally wanting to portray themselves in a negative light, to prevent an applicant from declaring spent convictions that (s)he does not need to. That being said, if (s)he does declare it, depending on how much detail (s)he gives, the employer should be able to determine for themselves whether a conviction is spent (the length of time it takes for a conviction to be spent is, I think, determined by the length of the sentence. Therefore, provided the applicant can give accurate dates, the employer should be able to do the math without needing so much as a calculator). The downside it that, whilst the employer should be able to determine that the conviction is spent, and thus should be disregarded, I am not aware of anything in place to ensure that once they have determined such that they do disregard it. Indeed, it is likely that, should an applicant slip up and disclose a spent conviction when there is no duty to do so, the employer will take it into consideration and choose an alternative candidate but, when pressed for a reason, will not admit to this being it (as can be fairly common with ageism and other forms of discrimination).

As for the question of whether the employer is allowed to ask, only when hiring for high-risk roles are they permitted to ask about spent convictions. I am not sure what the legal options are for an applicant with spent convictions who is asked about whether (s)he has any by an employer who is not afforded such an exemption. I am not even sure whether they could be found guilty of fraud if they lied and didn't disclose them as, as far as the employers legitimate entitlement to information is concerned, the spent convictions do not exist. I'm also not sure whether there are any sanctions laid down that can be imposed on employers who ask when they do not have such an exemption. Maybe a real lawyer would like to chip in here and fill in the blanks?

As for being expunged from public records, the answer is no, as they still need to be declared for high-risk roles. My understanding is that they cannot, however, be referred to in most court proceedings. I also believe that it is an offence to publish details of spent convictions for malicious purposes. I am not aware, however, whether this means that archived/historic publication of such convictions made whilst the conviction was unspent are required to be purged (I doubt it).

Again, IANAL, and I look forward to any clarification that can be made by a real lawyer.