Google Removes ‘Pirate’ URLs from Users’ Privately Saved Links::undefined

  • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    83
    ·
    1 year ago

    This feels like a corporation complying with their obligations under the DMCA.

    To maintain their safe harbor status, companies have to remove allegedly infringing content in response to a properly filed takedown notice. This does include links stored in google’s search results. This is what a company like google has to do when storing user data on servers in any country that signed the WIPO Copyright Treaty.

    They don’t seem to be doing this in a malicious way. They have done their duty and removed the offending links from their service. But they quite kindly chose to notify the user by email, including the exact URL that was removed. The user can store that link elsewhere.

    It would have been far easier to remove the link silently.

    • Grimy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      27
      ·
      1 year ago

      They shouldnt be reading and playing with things privately stored. Are they going to go through all my documents to replace any swear words? It’s completely inexcusable. Private doesn’t mean private until some big company asks about it wtf.

      • tomich@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s not on bookmarks. Is on collections(a different thing) that are public, shareable and technically hosted by Google. This whole thing has been overblown by not fact checking.

        • Grimy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          It deleted them from public and private collections.

          If google was taking out mentions of Tiananmen Square at China’s request, would you be okay with it?

            • Grimy@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              Both are blatant forms of censorship, one is extreme but the principal is the exact same.

        • Grimy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I don’t think something becomes public just because it’s saved in a Google app. I consider the contents of my gdrive private and my own. There’s ethics to consider that go wildly beyond “if it ends up on Google’s hardrive, it automatically belongs to them”.

          • streetfestival@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I don’t know how useful a public versus private distinction is here or in the current big tech digital age generally. The point is that if you’re storing your data on google servers, you aren’t entitled to (or receiving) any privacy from them or anyone they choose to sell your data and/or information to. They give you cheap storage because they’re interested in mining your data; it’s highly, highly profitable

            • Grimy@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Not modifying it is seriously the minimum. Doesn’t really seem defendable to me.

              • streetfestival@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                In an abstract moral universe, you’re entitled to your opinion, and I don’t disagree. But you don’t have a legal leg to stand on here, and this is just the modern big tech internet these days. Forewarned is forearmed though: back your stuff physically or in other ways that you have fuller control over. Because of all the bucks to be made off of harvesting user data, everyone wants to push you to the cloud

                • Grimy@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  I know very well just how powerful google is. I’m not saying it’s illegal, I’m saying it’s a dick move and isn’t defendable. They are behaving like shit and we should be vocal about it, even if they do own us.

      • seejur@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        If that’s the case (what OP mentioned), I think it’s still the responsibility of who made those effing laws. You cannot ask a corporation to break the law to protect your privacy. But you can definitely ask your representative to protect it

        • Grimy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s not an order from the president, they could easily say no and fight it.

          • SeabassDan@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            If they have anything to gain from it financially, which they probably don’t in this case, and are even being kind enough to let you know what they’re removing.

            Corporations aren’t nice to be nice, it usually helps their bottom line when they are.

            • Grimy@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              That’s kind of my point. They are being dicks, why do people feel the need to defend and excuse their behavior.

      • MrSqueezles@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Please contact your congressperson. Having dealt with shit like this, a company’s other option is fines approaching infinity and jail time for those who don’t comply. We elected the people who did this.

        We should be angry at corporations for monopolistic behavior, using profits from one business to prop up another and drown competitors (Bard), cross-business-unit offerings that smaller companies can’t compete with (Prime shipping, video, music), not this. This is a company complying with a terrible law.

      • Alex@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        This is google we’re talking about, there never was any privacy to begin with, and what you believed was there was always just an illusion. This was always their interpretation of the ideal and power of the internet with its “free sharing of ideas and knowledge” - they literally went with including personal data in that much like facebook and both have yet to be stopped or held accountable to start treating it as such.