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Debunking Jimbo: Slippery Google tries to evade European privacy

'It'll be real bad for news sites', when we pay the legal bills. Er, hang on?

'Leave it to the Courts' pleads Jimbo - Translation: 'Let publishers, not Google, foot the legal bills'

Why?

Wales: … So we don't end up with these very clumsy cases where Google has to determine whether a news story is something they're legally allowed to link to or not. That's a very hard position … that's a kind of decision that should be left um, to courts, um, at best.

Indeed, that’s just what will happen. The difference is that now the legal burden that comes with publishing information about people can fall on Google with its billions of dollars of revenue, rather than on the newspaper, website etc it is linking to - as has commonly been the case until now.

Google won't ultimately decide what it should link to - regulators or courts will. So two minutes into the exchange, we’ve already established that Wales is lobbying for a change in European privacy law, and doing so based on a false premise. You don’t need a polygraph to detect a little discomfort from Wales with the increased frequency of his ums and ahs.

Marr: I was wondering about Wikipedia itself. Because a lot of people don't like their Wikipedia site - 'Andrew Marr is a well known trick cyclist' - and I'm not, and I'm not happy with it, and I want that to be struck out. Can I now apply to Wikipedia to have that infamy removed?

Wales: First, we've always been open to those suggestions from people have a concern about their entry. I have just got a fantastically long email from someone who has been complaining about their Wikipedia entry for many years. A convicted fraudster who has had a Wikipedia entry from before her most recent conviction for fraud. And y'know … So for us we would not take something like that down. But y'know what's interesting for us is that maybe Google would not be able to link to it. And I think that's a real problem for the public internet.

The dilemma may be a problem for Google - but only if it wants to make it to into a problem. Wikipedia merely needs a citation not an online citation. The information contained in the newspaper article is widely available through the newspapers and Lexis-Nexis.

Marr: Do you think this is a moment for the internet age that's a serious one - in other words, we're moving to a stage where Governments are trying to grab power? Um, and that, that …

This is an extraordinary statement by Marr, who seems to be unable to distinguish between the executive branch and the judicial branch. The right to a private life was established in UK law when it adopted the European Convention on Human Rights. The law itself has kicked around since 1995.

Not surprisingly, Wales can’t quite believe the gift he’s been handed.

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