You have the right to remain moronic

Lawyers are like children: solo, they’re great, but as a group, they can shatter a strong man’s will. I’ve got friends who are attorneys, and they’re fine, but as a faceless lawmaking body, they make me want to drink rubbing alcohol. It is absolutely amazing to me that these guys can be so out of touch with technology at any level.

Journalists make a pitiful pittance — just ask Pammy. Yet I, all by my lonesome, am infinitely more in touch with technology developments than 90 percent of lawyers out there.

[ More Cringe: Two-timing Netflix will speed the downfall — and rebirth — of a free Internet. ]

“But Cringely, you ignorant slut,” you might say. “You spend all your time analyzing the geek world. These poor guys don’t have that kind of time.”

Really? Lawyers who bill $600 an hour and big, bloated law firms who charge four times that much — these guys can’t afford a research arm? It’s fine for real estate lawyers or those speeding ticket fixers with dingy offices located next to police precincts. But what about the legal yahoos drafting pro/con technology legislation and making it stick?

If I as a journalist publish something erroneous (and I have — please don’t cite all the examples, I drink enough as it is), at least I can immediately print a retraction after my editor punishes me with an appropriate level of electroshock “therapy.” Lawyers who get together in a group, snort some high-end flake in the bathroom, quickly peruse some Machiavellian prose to warm up, then head into court, though…. When those fools mess up, it can take years to correct their mistakes.

All of this comes into play with Europe’s recent right-to-be-forgotten law. Sorry, European Court of Justice; I know you guys are supposedly educated and make reams more than us weenie news geeks do, but if this is the kind of asininity-infested drivel coming from all that privilege, you should be forced to donate your fortunes to a worthy cause and go live under a highway overpass. What are you thinking?

To get you up to speed: The European high court recently ruled that individuals have the right to ask search engines to remove links to what is deemed “outdated, false, or irrelevant” information about them. The wording in the actual bill is incredibly confusing, a fantastic example of brain draining legalese. Fortunately, there was an official press release that was promised to be much more direct. I checked that out and, yeah, they lied.

If I read it right (and if I didn’t, please correct me in comments so I can, in turn, correct it next week — Wow! What a concept!), this nut-bar ruling is based on a 2010 case where a hapless Spaniard filed a complaint in Spanish court against a site that had left information about it him online even though that information was wrong and long outdated. So he filed against the site (logical) and against Google for linking to it (totally illogical). In typically inscrutable lawyer logic, the court ruled that publishing the information was legal, so the site got off unscathed, but Google’s linking to it was against the rules, so they were directed to remove any related search links. Apparently linking to “lawfully published” content is unlawful in Spain.

With the European high court’s decision, this Spanish debacle is now going to be applied to every country in the European Union. How exactly do these pinheads think this is going to work? This opens the door to an unimaginable crap-geyser of requests from anyone who doesn’t like what’s being said about them online.

Google isn’t the only organization that’ll affected by this either. The law only refers to “processors” of linkable results, so it can pretty much apply to anyone with a search box and linkable data to anything personal (corporate or individual). Like, say, every social media site in existence. The Zuck is probably so mad he’s jumping up and down on his Hot Wheels collection.

Are all these sites supposed to A) verify that these requests are valid and B) coordinate with each other to make sure all links are really removed? Not likely, so either that kills the whole sham right there or the Europeans will have to establish yet another Internet-devolving bureaucratic ignorance farm to coordinate. Which still won’t help since the law is in favor of the plaintiff, so by default, “processors” will have to remove the links anyway while all the claims are being truth-checked. That’s going to be years if it’s managed by a government agency.

And who determines if content is “irrelevant”? Is Google supposed to do that, and, if so, how the hell is it supposed to accomplish this? Acquire Pinkerton so it can put detectives on every complaint? Whose standard of irrelevance is it supposed to use? Its own? What if that doesn’t match the Zuck’s, for example? How much time until information is “outdated”? Does Bernie Madoff only have to wait a few years before he can wipe his digital footprint clean and start bilking oldsters again? And have these nuts considered that if only Google Europe has to do this (as the current ruling cites), that it’s not impossible for a European user to simply use Google U.S.? Apparently not, which means American users will probably get the same censored results. Thanks for that.

There are plenty of precedents both here and in the land of sangria and Latin studs Pammy would like to dump me for where people who feel they’ve been wronged by an information publisher, electronic or paper, have sued and won. In case you European lawyers are reading this, that means the wronged guy gets to go after the information publisher that screwed him, not the paper boy who dropped the rag on the stoop. The content gets removed, which means Google can’t link to it anymore anyway.

I hope Larry and Sergei take a break from buying the world and spend a little cash fighting this. It’s one case where I hope they win so I can forget the wannabe forgotten.

This article, “You have the right to remain moronic,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com.