VOA慢速英语:你能从网上删除信息吗?
The European Court of Justice recently ruled in a case involving the Internetsearch engine Google. The court ruled that Google must sometimes, onrequest, remove links to reports containing personal information. The casehas led to a public debate about this “right to be forgotten.” Many people arenow asking, which is more important: the right to privacy or the freedom ofinformation?
Glenn Gabe is president of G-Squared Interactive. The company has provideddigital marketing services to businesses, business leaders and movie stars. He says many people have something in their past that they would like toremove from the Internet.
“They went to prison, right? And maybe 10 years ago everything happenedand everything’s still showing up in Google on page one, even though they’vepaid their dues.”
Marc Rotenberg is head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Heagrees with the European Court of Justice that privacy is a basic right.
“You have to consider the ability of individuals to control the dissemination ofinformation about themselves. That is, in many respects, the core of freeexpression – how we choose to express ourselves or not to say things or dothings – that’s, you know, it makes us human.”
In the United States, a number of privacy activists disagree with the Europeancourt’s Google ruling. Jules Polonetsky is head of a group called the Future ofPrivacy Forum. He says the ruling is likely to limit the freedom of information.
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Belgium King Albert II (2nd L) visits the site of Google Datacenter in Mons, June 16, 2009. |
“So if someone can tell search engines or news aggregators or maybebloggers, ‘Sorry, that information tells us about some individual, that individualdoesn’t want to be found. You need to take it down,’ the effects really could bedramatic. It breaks the Internet.”
The European Court ordered Google to remove links containing personalinformation about a Spanish lawyer. He asked the company to take downlinks to his 1998 tax problems because the information was old and no longerimportant.
The right to a free press is noted in the United States Constitution, but the rightto privacy is suggested only indirectly.
Jules Polonetsky says the right to public information must be protected.
“So it’s a real blow to transparency if legal, public information can be obscuredsimply because somebody decides that it’s information that they would rathernot be available.”
Marc Rotenberg disagrees. He says the European judges did a good job ofbalancing privacy with press freedom.
“And what the European Court of Justice has done with this decision is to say, in effect, you know, search is an important service, but it has to be done in away that protects privacy.”
The court ruling will be costly for Google and other search engines in Europe. But it is not expected to affect their U.S. operations any time soon.
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