Time to forget, Google

Google is releasing a new web service for EU citizens who no longer want to appear in Google search results. The service , which basically consists of an online form, is a response to the European Court's recent ruling in which a Spanish man were given the right to remove sensitive personal information from the search results. 

The European Court decision is a so called “prejudice” which means the all member courts have to follow the ruling. For the individual it means that all EU citizens now have the right to be "forgotten" by Google - if certain conditions are met.

The EU citizens who want to be forgotten by Google can now submit a request to Google via the new website. Attached to the request shall be a copy of the individual’s identity card, which country's laws are cited, and which particular search string that should be removed. 

Google will review each case individually and then weigh privacy against the public interest. A politician who made ​​a fool of himself for instance cannot expect to disappear from search results since it would probably fall under public interest.

Google has also put together a special task force to try to develop a long term strategy for dealing with the anticipated floods of requirements for clearances to come. The task force consist of both Google big wigs such as Chairman Eric Schmidt and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, and externals as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and UN reporter Frank La Rue.

Want to get removed from search terms? Here is the web form.

Dubai PD utilizes Google Glass

Not only do the police in Dubai have a way cooler police car armada than most other countries, now their traffic cops will also be equipped with Google Glass. 

The whole thing is still in a testing phase, but the Dubai PD have already developed two new Google Glass apps; one that takes photos of traffic violations, and another that allows the officer to identify a car and its owner based on the car's registration number.

Currently Google Glass is officially only for sale in the US but the Dubai chief of police says to Gulf News that, if the test falls out well they will begin to provide more officers with Google Glasses, as the product becomes available in to the Dubai market.

Court Case eases up on Piracy

What is a downloaded movie worth? What is a reasonable punishment for a person who downloads a movie, and one that uploads a movie? Is piracy theft, or should it just be consider plagiarism?

Internet piracy is still a relatively new phenomenon, most countries are currently far from nailing down their legislation on the spectacle, and the debate is well under way on how piracy should be treated in the justice system. Sweden, being a fore runner when it comes to both Internet piracy, and piracy prevention, is still leagues from a solid answer.

Therefore, leading judgments are important, and since the Internet and information sharing is global, it is very interesting to examine how other countries deal with their cases of piracy. A case well worth putting under the microscope is a subpoena from the U.S.; Malibu Media Llc vs. John Does.

Malibu Media Llc saw how some of their movies (and other IP products) were leaked on the Internet. The company then tracked the IP-address used for sharing these files over a Bittorrent protocol, and based on that IP-address the company found the uploader. This time it happened to be a home user rather than a public hotspot. Subsequently geo-location was used to find the physical address, and the subscription service used, and thereby identified the physical person behind the uploads.

Or so they thought.

The law suit is as a classic example of what may cause many pirates to choose to hide their IP-address, i.e. example via VPN services, but interestingly enough, the judge in Florida decided to go a different route. The judge ruled that although the address was correctly identified, you cannot rule out the possibility that someone else used the computer. Home networks and home computers are after all often shared by several people.

Similar judgments have been identified previously in the U.S., and seems to be increasingly common. In Sweden we have had relatively few court cases of piracy that had been triad on the basis of IP-address, but this case may be setting the stage for how these cases can come to be interpreted.

What do you think about internet piracy? Please comment below.