When the CJEU’s ruling in the Google Spain case (Google Spain SL, Google Inc v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, Mario Costeja González) appeared on 13 May 2014 it sent shockwaves through the internet. Almost no-one had expected it, partly because it was almost the diametric opposite of the opinion of the Advocate General a little less than a year before, but more because it seemed, to some at least, to have enormous implications not just for Google but for the whole balance between privacy and freedom of expression. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Paul Bernal (Page 2 of 4)
The culture secretary, Sajid Javid, used his speech to the Society of Editors conference on Tuesday to spread misinformation – highly damaging misinformation – both about the importance of privacy generally and about the sadly mislabelled “right to be forgotten” in particular. Continue reading
The furore over the launch of the Samaritans Radar app has many dimensions: whether it’s ethical, whether it will help, whether it will chill – putting vulnerable people off using Twitter, whether it’s legal – there are huge data protection issues – are just a start. Continue reading
“Internet trolls face up to two years in jail under new laws” screamed the headline on the BBC’s website, after Chris Grayling decided to “take a stand against a baying cyber-mob”. It’s not the first time that so-called ‘trolls’ have been made the subject of a government ‘stand’ – and a media furore. This particular one arose after TV presenter Chloë Madeley suffered online abuse – that abuse itself triggered by the comments about rape made by her mother, Judy Finnigan, also a TV presenter, on Loose Women. Continue reading
I read with interest Professor Luciano Floridi’s report from the first two legs of what the Guardian described as ‘Google’s privacy ethics tour of Europe’. Floridi is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the Oxford Internet Institute, and one of the experts appointed by Google to its ‘Advisory Council’ on the right to be forgotten. Continue reading
One of the more strident critics of the Google Spain ruling by the ECJ, bringing into action at least a form of the much derided ‘right to be forgotten’, has been Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia. Continue reading
One of the many things people are getting angry about the ‘right to be forgotten’ is in the name… something that I’ve been banging on about for some years. I talk about the right quite a lot in my book Internet Privacy Rights… so I thought I’d just give a quick flavour of it. Here are a couple of paragraphs from Chapter 7: Continue reading
The last week has emphasised the sheer power and influence of the internet giants – Facebook and Google in particular. Continue reading
In one of my original reactions to the Google Spain ruling on the Right to be Forgotten, which I wrote for The Justice Gap, I said that Google’s response to the ruling was going to be very interesting: Continue reading
My first book, Internet Privacy Rights – Rights to Protect Autonomy – has just been published, in the Cambridge University Press series ‘Cambridge Intellectual Property and Information Law’. It is an academic book, and written from the perspective of a legal academic, but it is intended as something that contributes to a debate far beyond the ivory towers of academe, and in fields beyond that of law. It is also written, I hope, in a form that should make it accessible to people other than academics, and in particular other than lawyers. Continue reading
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