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eric schmidt: i wantto welcome everybody to the second of aseries of discussions about the right to be forgotten. this is a meeting ofan advisory council that google hasasked to be formed, and my name is eric schmidt. we're working hard tocomply with the ruling that was handed down by theeuropean court of justice in may, which requiresus to evaluate

individual requeststo remove information in search resultsabout a person. but there are complicatedissues at stake in the requests that we're receiving and we needto balance the right-- because of course, the court said wehad to make these decisions-- we need to balance theright of information against an individual'sright to privacy. we've convened thiscouncil of experts that you see tomy left and right

to advise us on how to do that. what we're going to do is wehave-- and i'll introduce them as we go along-- eight reallyinteresting experts who will give a shortdiscussion of their view on some of theseissues, and we want to make sure that reserveas much time for questions and answers, initially fromthe panel and the experts and then alsoinvolving our audience. because david and i-- and i'llintroduce david in a second--

are from google, we willnot be saying very much. we're listening andwe're primarily here to make sure that theconversation occurs between the expertsand the panel. the panel itself willdeliberate on its own in many different ways. now that i've talked about thepanel, let me introduce them. luciano is to myright, luciano floridi, professor of informationethics at oxford university.

as a secret, hegrew up near here. sylvie kaufmann,who is an editor in the frenchnewspaper "le monde." frank la rue, over on the right,former un special reporteur on the promotion and protectionof the right to freedom of opinion and expression. to my right, jose-luispinar, former spanish dpa and professor at theuniversity ceu of san pablo. to my left, let's see--a number of people.

sabineleutheusser-schnarrenberger, former federal ministerof justice in germany. peggy valcke, professor of lawat the university of leuven. jimmy wales, founder ofwikipedia, someone many of you know. and david drummondto my immediate left, who is the seniorvice president of google and runs many, manyimportant parts of google. our 10th member, whosename is lidia kolucka-zuk

is unable to be withus in rome, but she is participating inthe video online, and she'll participate infuture events, as well. on my left, we have a numberof experts-- mr. guido scorza, gianni riotta, alessandromantelero, oreste pollicino. on my right, we have professorvincenzo zeno-zencovich, mr. elio catania, mrs. lorellazanardo, mr. massimo russo, and we're looking forwardto their comments. we're going to dothis in english

with presentations in italian. make sure that you'rewearing a headset. we're also streaming this entireprocedure live to google video and many people around the worldare watching as we do this. what we're going to do isrun for roughly an hour, take a break, thenwe're going to have a short break for the bathroomand get a snack, and so forth. and then we'll haveanother group of four. and then as timepermits, we're going

to encourage audience q&afrom you all to our panel and to our experts, which i'mreally looking forward to. make sure from the questions--we'll give you cards. make sure you write yourquestions in the cards because that's the best wayto get your question asked. mr. guido scorza, areyou ready to be first? guido graduated maxa cum laudefrom the university of rome. he's an attorney oflaw and professor of it law at theuniversity of bologna.

as a boy, i lived inbologna, by the way. so i love bologna. he regularly holdsseminars and workshops for public institutionsand private companies. he's the president of theinstituto per le politiche dell'innovazione and acorrespondent for a range of journals and magazines,including "wired," "l'espresso,""fatto quotidiano," "computer business review,"and "internet magazine."

he's also published widely innational and international law reviews on manyof these subjects. so again, let's set a 10 minutegoal, guido, please go ahead. guido scorza: many thanks. [speaking italian] interpreter: whichreflect my way to look at the problemof forgetfulness and the collectivememory of the web, especially from adifferent angle,

different from the simpleapplication of the rules of the law and force,which i believe is inappropriate toregulate this phenomenon. now, please forgive me if i'llbe having some personal views. let me make myfirst consideration. the innovations,obviously, always have been the hallmark of historyand have been marking history. and they changethe way of living of people and of society.

this happened with fire, withthe wheel, with the press, with the telegraph,with electric energy, and this is alsohappening now again. now governments have thetask of governing changes. i'm not truly convincedthat the best of the ways to perform this taskis one of doing so by looking foranswers and solutions when consideringprinciples of law and of rules that belong topastimes because we're running

the risk of slowing downchanges or hampering changes prior to having obtainedan ethical judgment as to those circumstanceswhereby that change is going to be a good thingor a bad thing and to be hoped forfor the entire society. then there is asecond principle which i would like to sharewith you-- the right to be forgotten is somethingwhich is logically opposed to the right to have history.

the more we expand theright to be forgotten, the more we compress history. so i believe thatit is more than appropriate during this talk toput at the center of this table the definition ofwhat history is. erodoto dialicarnasso, the father of all of thehistorians, has always been writing that historywas never made only of the deeds of famouspeople and heroes,

the so-called publiccharacters and figures, but also human events. this is the exposure ofthe research of herodotus of carnassus becausehuman events should never fade with time and that thewonderful, great deeds that were made by barbariansand by greeks should be never forgotten. the human deeds, theone of common people, but also those wonderful deedsof heroes and famous figures,

the ones that we wouldnowadays term public figures. all this falls intothe same chapter, which is known as history. there is a thirdconsideration i would like to share with you wherebytoday's facts and events will turn into tomorrow's history. now, the events oftoday are the textures of the mosaic that historianis called to make up and to compose inorder to narrate

a historical periodor a given story. i don't believe thatevents or chronicled events may have a deadline. if we do so-- if we allowfor such a deadline-- we are compromisingthe possibility that historians haveto narrate history. then there isanother consideration which i would like to presentto you-- the indexation services and the researchservices i believe

are one and part of allof the services provided to the information society. they belong to new dynamicsof circulation of information. those who produce nowadays andpublish the online content, especially if it's aprofessional in the it sector, does so with the full awarenessand with the full expectation and legitimate expectation thatthat information will be made accessible throughinfrastructures, it infrastructures, andaccording to the dynamics

that are typical ofthat infrastructure. i believe that the freedom ofexpression which we exercise online is not having onlyregard to the content, but also with themodalities through which the publisher, theblogger, the journalist, the user of a platform ofjournalistic content decides to publish and todisseminate content. so delisting theindexing of context means that we arealtering ex-post

all of the accessibilitydynamics of that given content, thus marking in asignificant manner and affecting in a significantmanner the information right. in the case thisshould happen, we will be modifyingthat information. the delisting anddeindexing such content means that we are rippingaway from a book, the book of history, a number of pages. we are intervening on aspecific choice, which

was one of the publisherand the author. let me try and answer some ofthe questions that were asked. the first one-- who canask for the deindexation of a given piece of informationto protect his own privacy? well, i believe thatthis should never be dealt with thatfrom the viewpoint of the subjective qualitiesof the person requesting that, whether it be apublic person or not. what is important is toconsider public facts as opposed

to the ones that are not ofany importance to the public. there are public figuresand their own the facts that are having no interestfor the public, and then there arecommon places which instead are veryinteresting to the public. there are other hypotheseswhere common figures turn into public figures becausethey may be involved in interestingfacts to the public. now another aspect has gotto do with the time factor--

time-related factor--which is when content stops being of some public relevance. let me say something-- thatthe public interest of a given piece of news is not markedby a clock nor by a calendar. it is independent ofthe time function. if the politician disappears fora decade from the public scene and from the publiceye and then decides to go back to thepublic scene-- or maybe if there is another publicfigure that takes his place

and which may be connectedto that previous politician-- this is only an example,quite obviously-- it seems to be obvious thatwhatever the time factor may be, the facts in thenews, the pieces of news having to do withthat politician, should be still a topicalfact and will stay topical. this is one of the thingsshowing that we cannot to decide to forget justby making use of a clock or of a calendar.

this is the way i seeand look at things. there is another questionthat was asked-- another fact having to do with the positionand the role of a publisher or an editor in chief whenevera given delisting process is started, affecting content. here my position is veryclear, and it's in contrast with the one hoped for bythe european institutions right now. the delisting and deindexationhas a very important impact

on publishingchoices, especially the choices of the authorof that given content. the online contentbelongs in equal manner to the subject to whichthose personal data are to be referred and to theauthor of that content. that content gives to duesubjects that are somehow accountable forthat a given right. but there is asubstantial difference. the subjects, the data ofwhich are becoming relevant

in that givencontent, whether it be google or adifferent search engine, may be submitted to a judge orto an administrative authority and they may bejudged, consequently. the author of thatcontent has no right so as that google is goingto be indexing that content. if google or thatgiven engine is going to the list or the indexwhenever they should not, then the position of theauthor of that given content--

the position of theauthor or of the blogger-- are not going to be protected. there is going to be nojudge to whom a report or complaint for a giventort that was received. there is anotherconsideration, and this has got to do with thelast question, whereby it is up to the engine--the research engine-- to decide whether there is aright to be forgotten or not. here, my position is veryclear and very marked.

there is no such right. it is not up tothe research engine because the decisionis to be left in the hands of a judgeor independent authority under the control ofa given authority. that decision entails acomparative assessment between two fundamental rightsthat are pertaining to the man and to the citizen. one is the privacylaw-- the one of privacy

and personal identity-- versusthe freedom to be informed. this decisionshould never be left in the hands of aprivate subject who has to legitimately actaccording to a corporation logic. so the research engine willnever risk anything if it dies, but it will be confrontedwith lots of problems if it's removing that content. from this point ofview, we will have to--

or we should, at least--try and figure out a tool whereby thedecision is not going to be derogatedto the choice of a given subject-- in this case,a private subject. now i am finished withmy time, and thank you for listening to my comments. eric schmidt: thankyou, mr. scorza. do we have commentsfrom the panel? anyone like to start?

sabine. sabine leutheusserschnarrenberger: thank you. i've got a briefquestion to you. if you have becomeonce a public figure, i understand right that thenyou will in your whole life be a public figure. always. or are there-- can youmake a different case? guido scorza: [speaking italian]

interpreter: the issueis whether or not an individual remainsa public figure. it's all abouthis or her actions and their public interest. being a publicspeaker, even though we don't have a legaldefinition of public figure, in a network of networkslike the internet, it's totally irrelevantwhat is public. in a community, ina group on facebook,

isn't public formost of our society. i would rather put it interms of for how long peoples or their behaviors and conductsremain in the public domain. eric schmidt: sylvie,did you have a question? sylvie kauffman: yes. on the question ofthe impact on history, you know that somearchives, some material in historicalarchives, is classified for a number of years-- 15,20, 25, sometimes up to 50.

would that be somethingyou would consider reasonable that, forinstance, to delink, to remove link for a numberof years, or a given period? interpreter: i don't think so. no, i don't think so. i mean, it's not reasonable. i believe that this decisionis made by private subject. confidentialityconstrains of archives are generally decidedor established

by political bodies,by institutions, public institutions,because any decision is in the society's best interest. when a private subjectthrough a policy takes over in thesedecisions, they have an impact on thehistorian's freedom to reconstruct history. these days, whoeverlooks up a search engine, the search enginereturns a reply

that may be exhaustive or noton the basis of the engine algorithm only. acting on thealgorithm of a search engine on the basisof time constrains is like a constraint for thereconstruction of history. i hope it was clear enough. eric schmidt: i'msorry, go ahead, frank. frank la rue: mr. scorza, letme see if i understood you correctly becausepart of your-- i

understood the wholequestion of history and why should anyone definewhat is of public interest to reconstructhistory or redefine the historicalmemory of a society. but you also made a pointabout who is the body or the institution thatcan make the decision or should make the decision? if i understandcorrectly, and this is what i would like youto clarify-- in this case,

this court decision is sayingthat it should be the search engine that shouldmake the decision. it should be googleto make the decision. you're saying thatthis is, in effect, dangerous for the futurebecause although it sounds interesting for one person whomade the request, in reality, it's giving too much power toanyone with a search engine and could be given to anyoneelse with a search engine and not defined by a moreindependent authority

to make the decision ina more objective way. so this is effectivelycould turn out to be a censorshipmodality in the future. is that correct,my understanding? interpreter: correct. i agree. totally correct. my point is that the owner,the subject, the owner of data, those who ask to bedeindexed within this framework

are kind of hyperprotected,whereas on the opposite, the content authors haveno protection at all. for two reasons--they lose their right to adjust the process,adjust the trial before court or anything. and they also lose theright to be contradictory because theindexation of contents can go away without everyinforming the author. so from my pointof view, those who

exercise the freedom ofinformation in some way have no right to protectthe public interest to get to know anypublished content. am i clear? frank la rue: very. eric schmidt: luciano, didyou also have a question? luciano floridi:do we have time? eric schmidt: yeah, go ahead. just make it quick.

luciano floridi: thanks. i'm going to do this inenglish to help the translator. to put it simply, should wetrust a private company running the search engine tooperate on the links, or should we trust agovernmental agency to decide about these links? interpreter: i don't thinkthe whole issue boils down to trusting ormistrusting a public subject. indeed, the rationalefor making a choice

is totally differentbetween a private subject and those willadminister justice. for instance, a corporationhas to maximize its profits by minimizing any risk. so deindexing some contentdoesn't mean minimize the risk. it actually meansincreasing the risk. so i may trust aprivate subject, but i should also trust thefact that the corporation acts not as corporations do.

in a doubtful case, removingor not removing content, is the corporation going tochoose to deindex contents because that's the only way toremove the risk of complaints? this decision,this choice, is not easy to be justifiedfor a corporation. it's not justifiablefor a corporation because it means that thecorporation has decided to accept or increase risksand be subject to a court. a court could decide thatthe corporation is faulty.

so i trustcorporations protecting their shareholders' rights. shareholders' rightsare not always the same as the author's rights. eric schmidt: thank youvery much, mr. scorza. thank you for your crisp answersand staying to our schedule. mr. russo, i'd like togo to you if we can. mr. massimo russo isthe editor in chief of "wired italia," published byconde nast, as everybody knows.

previously, he worked as thedigital content director, head of the eu deskand online journalist at grupo editorialel'espresso for 12 years. before, he served asreporter and senior editor for l'espresso dailynewspaper for 10 years. he's co-authored a bookcalled "erectici digitali-- on journalism inthe digital age," and he's a member of thecommission for an internet bill of rights of theitalian parliament.

please go ahead, mr. russo. massimo russo:[speaking italian] interpreter: thank you. i will make an introductionand three comments. introduction-- inmy view, the ruling decided that by european courtof justice issued last may concerns conflicting interests--the right to be forgotten, the right to thefreedom of expression, and the right toprotecting your own rights.

we should bear in mind thatthings change over time depending on the privacy, onthe availability of technology devices, and alsoon societal habits. the court ruling, in my view,underestimated article 11 of the european charterof fundamental rights whereby every individual,not only the media, have the right to the freedomof expression and also the need to be informed and get toknow without any frontier. this was underestimatedbecause we're not

talking about personal data. we're talking about a narrowsubgroup of information published lawfully, sothey published online. those who publishedthat information did so lawfully,so no justification is required to publishinformation different from private information. we should also accept thatthe freedom of expression should not conflict,it should not clash,

against public rights. most content in socialnetworks and social media should be deleted altogetherif this opinion prevails. the key issue is thepublic interest, i think. let me make a coupleof points of comments on the special problemsthat were brought up with this ruling. quite uniquely,the court decided to attach to a private subject,as guido scorza underlined

a while ago, the power to givethe visibility to information, published information. third party subjectsare also entitled to store that informationin their database. it also necessary to implythat such information causes prejudice to theinterested parties. it would be much betterto ask the author to remove that information. this already happens, bythe way, in some circles.

i spent many years in newspaperswith their own archives and databases. anyway, in the event thatno settlement is achieved, is reached, by theparties, the rights to remove content from thesearch engine indexes should be established bya public subject after hearing all theinterested parties. otherwise, this could harmthe collective memory. more and more, we are goingto have digital archives,

so i don't see why, according tothe european court of justice, the rights of the individualshould prevail over the interests ofthe internet users. in my opinion-- thisis my first comment-- it would be much fairerto do the opposite. protect, as much aspossible, the integrity of the archives and the indexesunless, after a contradictory, a public subject sees thatit is necessary to remove that information fromthe search engines.

but this decision shouldbe made by a public body or institution. second point-- the newconcept of a public figure. according to the court, theinterest of the collectivity is to get information,to receive information, varies according to therole that these people have in society. but how can we define this? it changes over time.

we should also underlinethat the internet has changed the notion of reputationand also of a public figure. anyone in theperformance of their jobs does become a public figure. a store keeper, anartisan, a hotel owner-- all of these people havetheir own public profile, put together and updated daily. indeed, we go online toreview their services. getting informationon the quality

and characteristicsof these figures does have a public interesteven though they are not public figures,strictly speaking. while this is true forpeoples' professions, an increasing value isbeing attached these days by new services liketime sharing, carpooling, and similar services. resources and services areshared by non-professionals. mobile devices, social mediaare making this phenomenon

more and moreimportant in our lives. and again, non-professionalspublish their reviews. the european courtof justice has not taken into considerationsuch conditions at all, otherwise it shouldhave acknowledged them. we are always discussing aboutlawfully published information. by including information intoa search engine, of course, anyone has theright to access it. search engines andtheir indexes--

should we inform theinformation author or users about removal of thatinformation from an index? well, i think thatthis information is not only advisable,but also necessary. even to an expert, it'sjust impossible to assess what factors establish the orderor hierarchy of information into a search engine. how can you tell whetheror not information has been removedfrom the indexes?

it is important that anydecision in this respect is transparent. for the time being, publicationis the only possibility for authors to avoiddeletion and removal. however, all usershave the right to know that a resultspage has been changed due to some strange mechanismsinto the search engine algorithm. finally, and this has nothingto do with legal issues,

i do hope that peoplechange their opinion on certain aspects. i disagree with those who claimthat you have nothing to hide. you shouldn't fear, youknow, your information to become public. if certain informationbecomes of public domain, the best way to protectthat information is to object to theidea of reputation based on this misperception.

there exist people who don'twant to be in the spotlight. other people like to publish, tolet other people know whatever they do or think. i think that thiswill take the time, but i think that aday will come where the ethical sense ofrespect will establish how these thingsare to be treated. thank you. eric schmidt: thankyou very much.

mr. russo. yes, [inaudible]. jose-luis pinar: yes, andi will speak in italian. interpreter: this has gotto do with the relationship existing between searchengines and their freedom of expression. the question is thefollowing-- the search engine, is it granting or simplyfacilitating the right to freedom of expression?

what i mean aretoday's search engines a part of an essentialcore that belongs to the freedom ofexpression, or is it only a smear tool thatmakes it more accessible? is it an indispensabletool for the freedom of expression in theage of the internet? i also have a secondquestion-- i.e. the information to begiven to the publisher. the information of the removalintervention, according to you,

is it appropriate, and at thesame time, also necessary? interpreter: let me startfrom this last question. yes, it is absolutely necessary. without this, we cannot haveany discussion, no debate, which may, in the end, if everthere's going to be the removal from the index of the decisionof the author or of the citizen that was publishing agiven piece of information to republish it by justinforming the public of the occurrence of acancellation or of a delinking

it, of the removal. this is the onlyway through which it is possible to defendoneself from such an accusation. with respect to thefirst question that was raised by you,i do not believe that it's appropriatenor correct to assign to search engines afunction that certainly does not belong to them becausethey're private subjects. i believe that this hasgot do with surveillance

with the freedom ofexpression on the web. search enginesrepresent a subject. they perform their ownright to express themselves through a code. even writing codes, notonly writing words or ideas, and freedom of expressionsrepresent the writing of a code that isthe decision of what needs to be preferredat the time of an answer or in a given page whether thatcould place limits to a query,

whether that represents adecision in itself which then falls under the chapterof freedom of expression. well, yes. it would be hard to deny that. it would be hard to deny thatsearch engines, especially in given countries, andespecially some of them, by now have taken upsuch a relevant role in the life of our citizens, sothey represent the spectacles through which we getto know the world.

this is, i'm sure,something which will have to requirethe assessment and evaluation ofwhat this means. probably not today,not during this event. luciano. luciano floridi:[speaking italian] interpreter: please forgiveme, because i did not understand therules of the game. i thought that we haveto speak in english here.

let me go back to myown mother tongue. let me ask a question,maybe an academic question. for so much time, we hadthe press revolution. we did try to createsome public networks and we did lookat this revolution with great attention--journalism, rules, regulations. and then what happened? we were sort of taken aback. we were not acting in time.

the state with a capital swas delegating completely to private subjects, themanagement and the handling of what was the sieveof our information society, the very bloodof information society. now, we're closing the stablesafter the cows have run away. i've heard this many times,but why has this happened? why shouldn't they be incharge, the search engines? shouldn't they be in chargeof the handling and management of links?

i would like to ask you why isit that a search engine could not turn into the polethrough which we could handle and manage accessibilityof information? why is it that we are soconvinced that this is not so? maybe there are some otherhidden reasons behind that. interpreter: well, theythemselves are private subjects so they're competingwith other subjects in building up informationwhich is not made of truth, but rather made up of tesseras,that have to be put together.

if ever we wereto hold that this is to be so-- that is to saythat if search engines are to be recognized andgranted this type of role, then we, as has been writtenin the academic paper of larry page's and [inaudible],then as they said, it would be appropriate thatthese search engines should stay within theacademic environment. it should not be turned intoa private subject or company having objectives that are forprofit because this otherwise

would contaminate andentail contamination, such as advertisingaspects and many more, which are typical ofa private subject. either we hypothesizea public statute which is supernationaland somehow extraterritorial for the searchengines and applicable to them, so they should begiven a statute which is completely differentfrom private subjects. they will be giventhe right to stay

on the market justlike any other subject. or i believe that this directhandling and management on their side of what isvisible or what should not be made visible on the sideof the public or to the public is not appropriate. peggy valcke: yes,i would like to ask a very practical question. there is a lady. she's a celebrityin my country who

has been confrontedin the last two years with blog posts thatshe died in a car crash or in a ski accident. she doesn't know who'sbehind the posts. you referred inyour intervention, it would be better to askthe author of the information there's no way to do so. if she asks google tohave links to those posts removed when yousearch for her name,

then where is the harmto freedom of expression of the author who,with malicious intent, is posting this informationwhich is clearly not true, because she's alive and kicking. where it is the harm forfreedom of expression-- it has been mentioned acouple of times already-- there is this balancingbetween privacy and freedom does all informationdeserve the same protection under freedom of expression?

where exactly is theharm if you remove links to certain information whengoogling-- sorry, or using a search engine-- usingthe person's name in search terms in a search engine. it's not just about google. it's also othersearch engines that may have to follow the rule. interpreter: yes,you are referring to some specific behaviorsthat are representing

a crime for whichthere is no application of the freedom of expression. meaning by this that itis easy to damage someone, and that is to be recognizedas a crime in italy, but in other countries, as well. it is possible throughthe request filed to the authorities to trackthe author of that content or the one who is handlingthat given website. certainly, you can haveaccess to the person

handling a given website. there is noectoplasm doing that. there is a specific entity. there are some hosts, thereare some subject that do so, and in that case, it should bepossible to remove the content. i do not believe thatthis type of case should fall under the chapterof our own discussion today or of our own debate today. i believe that withrespect to my own comments,

i have stated many timesand stressed many times that we are confrontedwith information which is legitimatelypublished for which, even in the case ofthis ruling, there is a legitimateright of those who published it to havethem stay online. what you're sayingis absolutely true, but then it is to be referredto a totally different case, i believe.

eric schmidt: thankyou, mr. russo. we now have theopportunity to hear from our next expert,mr. gianni riotta. we've run way over. can you ask yourquestion later, or not? if you want to go ahead-- ok. gianni riotta: let me answerthe question for massimo russo. if you ask me the questionfor massimo russo, i will answer instead of him.

[laughter] eric schmidt: gianni writesa column for "la stampa" and for "foreign affairs." he's contributed op-eds to"the washington post" and "le monde," "new york times,"and "the financial times." he served as the editor of"tg1," "rai," "il sole 24 ore," and is a deputy editor at"corriere della serra." his book "princeof the clouds" has been awarded thevittorini prize in italy

and the florio prize in the uk. he was a finalist for themedici award in france and the book of theyear for bol.com. he's a member of the councilof foreign relations. gianni has receivedthe america award from the italy usafoundation in 2015. you have the floor, mr. riotta. gianni riotta:thank you very much. i will disobey you, mr. schmidt,and will thank the panel

for inviting me because it's ahuge, huge opportunity to share ideas with you guys, especiallybecause my main point is going to be that we are in troubleand the european justice is in troublebecause we are trying to define and rule andunderstand on a moving issue. while we talk, the digital eraand the digital world goes on. we are trying to fix asubject that is not an event. it is not september 11th andwhat happened september 11th. it's a process.

defining a process isalways more difficult, especially for ajournalist like me, than defining a single event. many years ago,actually 30 years ago, i wrote my dissertation atthe school of journalism at columbia universityon computer and privacy. and for many years, iwas very proud of this because i felt that i wasa pioneer on a subject that nobody, or very fewpeople, cared at the time.

but then my pride left mevery humbled because yes, it was great that we dealtwith that issue then, but i was completely wrong. if you read it,it's totally wrong because we assumed--most of the scholars then assumed that it wasthe private citizen that should defend his dataagainst the state, against huge companies tryingto snatch information for him. what happened wasexactly the opposite,

as you know much better than me. the people, theordinary individuals, gladly share these mostembarrassing pictures, this information, thisdata, the blogs, right, whatever we have in mind. it was actually theother way around. we didn't understand whatprivacy was all about. and why would we failto understand that? the reason why professionaljournalism is in trouble today

is not because thereis the web, but it is because we missed thegreat shift, the great divide between the 20th centuryand the 21st century. the 20th century was acentury of masses-- in war, in production of information,the mass was ruling history. the 21st century is a century,at least in the western world, of individuals. you fight as a single commandoperator or a single guerrilla fighter.

you make informationas a single user. you deal information andyou deal your privacy as a single private individual. this is what the people atthe european justice court fail to understand. don't get offended with them. it's not that they haveanything against google. that's how europe exists. europe thinks thereis a problem, yes.

we'll establish a ruleand the problem is solved. this is in agriculture, in theeconomy, in the eu, everything. there is in the europeanpublic opinion a strong sense that globalizationand the digital world sort of knows something thatis basic to the european core of value. sometimes, the reactionis like, let's stop time. let's stop the clock like iwould like to do it and then speak for the next 15 minutes.

let's stop the watch. that's what thesentence was all about. but they cannot. they cannot. if you ask me, i waswrong 30 years ago. again, after september11th, i was at the time working with the peopleat west point academy. the professors there wereputting freedom and security on an axis and trying toestablish how much liberty they

should renounce in favorof how much security. they students-- theywere the officers then who fought the war iniraq and afghanistan in the future-- were trying todecide how much freedom and how much security. this is what we are at today. even in the united states,after mr. snowden and mr. greenwald review the extentof the metadata collection from the nsa.

there was some shift in privacy. people became alittle more interested in what privacy is all about. it's different, the idea ofprivacy in the united states than it is in europe, buti promise you something-- that i've seen privacyand the idea of privacy and the sense of the individualprivacy shifting so much that i promise that when the nextterrorist attack will hit europe or the unitedstates, you'll

see the pendulum swinging back. you'll see thependulum swinging back. then people will react ina totally different way. your trouble-- andi envy your job because it's going to be veryexciting-- is to understand a tide that is still moving. it's still moving. we have to try to pin down, andit's going to be impossible. so let's focus please, let'sfocus please on the process.

when i was a studentat columbia university, privacy and the public figurewas fantastically simple. you read the "new yorktimes" versus sullivan, the historical sentenceof the supreme court. or you read-- it wasactually a funnier case-- ron gallela, the kingof the paparazzi, versus former firstlady jacqueline kennedy. it was easy. a public figure was game.

you could write anythingyou wanted about them, but as the judges establishedin the gallela case, you have to be tasteful. in england, it was differentbecause the paparazzi has a much greater degreeof invasion, of freedom of invasion, for public figures. butt it was clear whata public figure was and it was clear whata private person was and the access that you had.

today, it's notlike that anymore. because as my friend andcolleagues tried to define yet, what is a public figure? who is a public figure? when i post something onfacebook, am i a public figure? if i am electedsenator in five years, is my former girlfriendwhen i was a totally nobody, does she have the right to postthe pictures that i gave her? i'm a public figure today,but i wasn't a public figure

when i shared thepictures with her. of course, as a senator, i wouldnever share the stupid picture that i shared when i wasa free-roaming young boy. try to pin down this with aset of rules and you will fail. massimo is youngerthan me, so he hopes to changethe cultural mood. i feel for itbecause you'll fail. he will fail. because we have to builda new culture, and indeed

we have to build a new culture. things that are happening todaywere unthinkable 10 years ago. if the mail of the bossof the cia is not safe, why do we have to assumethat mine is safe? if my entry on wikipediacan be changed in every day, should i go thereevery day and deal with the trolls thatchange it every day? this is something that happens. at a certain point, the only waythat we have-- but i understand

that for the lawmakers,it's different-- i agree with massimo on this, youhave to follow the tide. you have to follow the tide. i think that google-- sincehere, you represent google-- i think that google willeventually will come out the winner in the issuebecause the tide of history is in your favor. people in the court andthe european system of law will follow.

but the problem is stillthere, and the problem will be there for you to judge. what is the problem? the best definition thati find in so many years is in the gospel of saint john. because saint john says,you will know the truth, and the truth willmake you free. this is fantastic forpeople that do my job and for people that do your job.

at the same time, a fewlines later, he says, but people preferdarkness to light. we have to work between this. we know that giving truth topeople will make them free, and very often, people-- andplease, let's not be smug, people include us as well. it's not them, it's us. sometimes people willprefer darkness to light. thank you very much, and i'llgive you 30 seconds left.

eric schmidt: thank youvery much, mr. riotta. frank, i think you get a chanceto ask anyone any question. if you'd like to begin. gianni riotta: i'll givemy 36 seconds to massimo, if he wants to answer you. frank la rue: noactually, it is a question that is valid for allspeakers up to now. it has to do with the one ofthe comments from the council. it has been impliedand said very clearly

that there has to be a balancebetween the right to privacy, which is very important, and theright to freedom of expression in the sense that allrights are interrelated and interdependent. but at the same time, theexercise of some rights, if misused, can actually harmthe exercise of other rights. this is the positionwhich we should fall. basically, allthree speakers have mentioned that if a decisiongoes too far in terms

of limiting accessto information, it would be a breach offreedom of expression and the right toaccess information. although it may have a goodintention for one individual, it ultimately is affectinga public exercise of a public good, which isthe idea of having access to information in general. i think it was very importantto talk about the exclusion when it is an illegal orillegitimate use, which

falls under the limitationsof freedom of expression because obviously, thatis malicious information and that's notrightful information. how severe would this be seen? and secondly, since this isonly related to search engines, i constantly hear anargument that it is not limiting the information becausethe information is there. it's only limiting onetechnology that makes it faster to access that information.

in reality, that isan argument that one could use for theinternet in general. i mean, one could goto a public library and look for oldnewspapers or for old files and look for themby hand and the idea is that internet was createdas a way of developing faster forms of communication. are we, by limiting theuse of the technology, effectively limiting what todayis the common form of accessing

information or not? would that be the breachof freedom of expression that was being mentionedby all three speakers? gianni riotta: thanks very much. technology is not bad. it's not good. neither is it neutral,as saying goes. i have, honestly, aneasy answer to that, but then it's verydifficult to implement--

it's the old differencebetween art and pornography. if we try to define what isart and what is pornography, it's almost impossibleto find the definition. but we immediately know whatis art and what is pornography. the same thing is true aboutmalicious information and maybe partisan, butdecent information. i saw online in a majoritalian publication a young reporter, adigital reporter filming an italian politician thatwas snoring on a train,

and then when he wasstartled and woke up, he started the interview. and of course, the guycame out as a perfect ass. to me, that'smalicious journalism because you don't takepictures of a guy that doesn't know that you aretaking pictures of him just to make fun of him. online, the new digitaljournalists love that and they lapped it up.

my students know--and some of them are here in theaudience-- i always tell them, newmedia, old values. new media, old values. the same sense of decency,fairness, equanimity, independent style thatwas right in the old media is not obsolete today. it's not obsolete today. it is more than important today.

my old colleaguestease me because they say that i am an enthusiastfor the new media, and i am. and i am simplybecause my mission is to export those oldvalues in the new media. i don't know if ianswered your question, but that's the best i can do. eric schmidt: we havea question from sylvie, and can you ask yourquestion quickly, as well? sylvie, quickly?

sylvie kauffman: ok. you've touched on thisissue a little bit, but i would like you toelaborate, if you can. the tide, is it the same onboth sides of the atlantic regarding privacy? do you see a differentattitude in the way this process is movingin europe and america? gianni riotta: i may be wrong. from all the data i have seenand from living part time

in europe and inthe united states, my feeling is that the useronline is exactly the same, especially if he's under 35. there's absolutely nodifference between my student at princeton universityand my students here at the schoolof government luiss-- exactly the same reaction. the intellectuals,the analysts, have a different cultural approach.

more open in the unitedstates, and more-- i won't take moreclosed, but i would say more respectableor more worried about privacy in europe. i think you see a divide betweenthe general public and mass opinion and the analyst, theruling class, the journalist. and that's somethingthat's very interesting. we'll see if the snowdengreenwald tide-- and they got the pulitzer prize lastyear-- doesn't change things

in the united states, as well. that may happen. eric schmidt: and sabine. sabine leutheusserschnarrenberger: i understood yourstatement that we are living in apost-privacy century. is that right? i'll ask you-- in the future,if every individual is an object of nsa, ofcompany, of social media,

and others, what can wedo-- government, scientists, politicians, andso on-- to defend the rights of the individual? what can we do, then? gianni riotta: this is avery interesting proposition. of course, the idea of privacy,it has evolved because farmers before the industrialrevolution had no idea that something was private. their rulers hadaccess to whatever they

were owning or hiding and stuff. it's something thatdeveloped with democracy and with the world. but what's changingis that since we're talking about google,with our students, we do always anexperiment with gmail. you start sending gmail aboutgoing on vacation somewhere in sicily, sincei'm from sicily, and then you'll start gettingadvertisements-- go to sicily,

buy this in sicily. this is clear thatit's not a somebody. it's not that mr. wales readsmy mail and says, go to sicily. but there is analgorithm that decides. do the students getworried about that? not at all. they are perfectlyaware that they're trading something-- they'retrading the free access to a service ofmail with data that

are shared with the advertisers. their sense of privacy isdifferent from my dad's sense of privacy. because if you'd told my dad,do you mind if i read your mail, and i'll give you afree coke for that? my father would say, not ever. because it's different. it's a differentsense of privacy. i guess that a muchyounger generation will

have a different--people that were are born in thedigital world, i think that they will have adifferent sense than we have. not because they're going tobe less jealous of what i own, but because they feel thatthey are part of a community. they feel that theirfacebook friends have access to theirsoul more than you and i. eric schmidt: thankyou, mr. riotta. but they don't want that thensa has access to their data,

i think. no one wants this. gianni riotta: if you look-- male speaker: doesthe clock still work? gianni riotta: no, no. may i? no. ok. eric schmidt: go ahead.

gianni riotta: if you look atthe polls in the united states, you're wrong. nobody is quite a fewmillions of americans. if you look at what willhappen in the future, you may be right. if you ask me if the nsa programwas right, it was a dump. it was a dump. they were collectinginformation that nobody read. it was so much informationthat nobody read.

not only was it wrong,but also it didn't work. they should have read thenewspapers about isis. the good news is we're goingto hear from lorella zanardo. she's a writer,documentarianist, activist, and a member of theexpert committee in the parliamentof internet rights. she wrote a book aboutthe exploitation of women on television, a blockbusteron the internet watched by 7 million people.

she's also a memberof advisory board of win, an internationalwomen's conference, an organizational consultant,an educator, and a lecturer. she's a member of theparliamentary commission in charge of preparing a draftinternet bill of rights, which will be presented inoctober of this year. go ahead. lorella zanardo:[speaking italian] interpreter: ithink that the need

to balance two fundamentalrights-- the right to information and theright to privacy, including the rightto be forgotten-- can hardly find a finaldefinitive solution. in most cases, time criteriato decide whether or not a request to remove isjustified may apply, but there are alsosituations where it is necessary togo deeper into this. and possibly, you mayhave to change your mind.

responding automaticallyto requests may be inconvenient,but also unavoidable because the collectionand management of data on individuals is going tobe more and more complicated with the internet andthe way it is used. striking a balancebetween privacy having to do with theindividual and the right to information, a collectivedimension of relations and quite decisive fordemocracy, is so important.

this can't be settledonce and for all, i think. moreover, organizations,either public or private, how can they find thisrequest in a [inaudible] way? certainly, theywant to be trusted by citizens and consumers. i focus on two main questions. number one-- does theformat of a context, the image versus text matter? the type of contentis important.

for instance,images, pictures, are content people should paya lot of attention to. on the web, this is muchsought after because it gets the messageacross right away. images are perceived by abroader audience much more than written text. young people tell theirlife about images. instagram, forinstance, allows people to talk to othersonly through pictures

without writing anything at all. furthermore, and that'salso very important, individual images-- imagesof the face, of our face, images of our body, arevery sensitive data, the most sensitive data. the face of a person--we are here today, we're looking at each other,we look ourselves into the eye. face comes fromlatin, "faca," to do. that's the meaningof the original verb.

a face is a uniquefeature and it also points to thevulnerability of a person. so facial informationof people whose acts are of public importancein themselves are not. let me make an exampleto make myself clear. seeing the face of someone whohas been arrested or raped-- maybe images taken fromother times in their life and not during thearrest or the rape don't add anything to the news.

that's just needless voyeurism. because as i said, the faceis very vulnerable for anyone. we represent ourselvesthrough our face. this is particularly truefor younger generations who tell themselves about faces. the issue of faces ismade even more important by face recognition softwarebased on internet images. if those pictures andimages are used illicitly, they may turn into a variousserious threat to privacy.

asking for a linkto be removed may be judged inappropriateon the basis of text only, but it can bejustified on the basis of the visualcontent, the picture. the second issue i focusedon is the content integral to preserving ahistorical public record? i think the internetcontents are going to be more and moreimportant for historical documentation and topreserve a human culture.

however, there are twopossible traps or mistakes regarding the internet and theentire world as the same thing. the internet doesaffect the world, has an impact on the world,but it isn't the world. whatever you can findonline is important, is relevant, butit's not exhaustive. there exist more and morethings about the phenomena and individuals and that can befound not online, as it were. another possiblemistake is believing

that whatever youfind online is good and can be used forhistorical documentation. this is true onlyto an extent, only to a point, because muchdepends on the organized nature of and such information. in other words, in termsof historical memory, it is quite important toorganize data rather than that preserving them all together. most data illustrating the lifeof a society are quite similar.

you don't need to havehuge amounts of data. you should rather organize themsystematically and effectively. some things are importantfor the individual's privacy and may be less importantfor documentaries and historical research. data about people involved incertain facts and circumstances like crimes against humanity,the hierarchical order is just the opposite. the public dimension takes over.

let me also make anotherfor couple of brief points. and i also ask youto think about this. if you fear that informationabout us survives us, in the future, can we freelyexpress our opinion on, say, gossip or sharingpersonal experiences, casting a comment onpolitical fractures, or are we going to rathergo for self-censorship? this is also importantbecause our behaviors change. remembering, recollecting,not forgetting

is one of the most importantgifts of human beings, including four technical,scientific disciplines and the arts. over the centuries,people have learned how to come to termswith their errors, like repenting or shame. but this can be justpreliminary or transient. being persistently facedwith your own mistakes, as it just happensonline, may prevent people

from redeeming their mistakes. persistent memory and the rightto be forgotten, to some extent do comply with this need. in conclusion, accordingto my personal experiences as an activist and my work onraising the awareness of people and the conscious use of theinternet for young people, i think that itis quite important to educate youngpeople, even when it comes to the rightto be forgotten.

the internet is ahuge, great thing, but it should be usedin a conscious manner. young people should learn how touse the internet and their data better. they should becomemore aware of what happens by publishinginformation about themselves, and this way peoplecan learn how to control informationabout themselves, thereby minimizing riskysituations like asking

to remove data or links. eric schmidt: thankyou again, ms. zanardo. questions from the panel? sylvie has a question. sylvie kauffmann:i understand you're part of this parliamentarycommission which is working on theinternet bill of rights? is the right to beforgotten addressed in this bill of rights?

and in what way? interpreter: well,the commission was establishedrecently and our agenda includes debate on theright to be forgotten, the right to information. we have held one meeting so far. the commission hasa membership of 20. half of them areparliamentarians, half are experts, so we'restill in the early days.

anyway, this is one ofthe themes of the topics to address. also, we want todiscuss education for young generations. this is quite compelling initaly, and not only here, not just in italy. jose luis pinar:[speaking italian] interpreter: you talkedabout repenting and shame and this process of removaland if i understood correctly,

you also discuss the rightto be forgotten as a tool, as an instrument inthis redemption process. don't you think we should ratheruse the expression, the right to one's own past? for instance, take the europeancourt of justice ruling. why mario costeja shouldbe worried today in 2014 for lawful information whichdates back to 1998 if he has the right to thatpast experience? i mean, why should we fearthat pictures, images, comments

are less illicit or unlawful? why should we fearthis about the future? don't you think thisis a bit too much? we live in an open democracy. what should be avoided is-- wedon't want to pay the price, we don't want to cause negativeconsequences to anyone. i think that we should allhave the right to our own past. interpreter: boththings are valuable. when i say education, meaneducating boys and girls

so that in the future, what youhave just explained can happen. it's very unlikely today. look at the thrashes,meanness of teenagers. what you wish is absolutelyacceptable and reasonable, but our society is notready yet for this. if i take a picture-- itook an embarrassing picture when i was 16, and then igo to a job interview-- that shouldn't have anyimportance any way at all. we want to educate the boys andgirls, young boys and girls,

to avoid this. at the same time, i thinkthat any individual, every individual, should havethe right to change over time. there is a beautifulcomedy, beautiful drama by luigi pirandello,an italian author, entitled [speaking italian],"the late matia pascale." it's just about this. in life, you can change. you have the right to change.

a number of religionsover the centuries have stressed the importanceof repenting ones self and starting it all over again. i think this shouldbe debated thoroughly. interpreter: i don't wantto go into philosophy, but i surely appreciatedmassimo russo's presentation on the delinking of informationto be lawfully published because it is established by acourt, so where is the divide? speaking of education, i thinkwe should accept consequences.

we live in a newtonian world. when something has happened,it has already happened. if you go bust, you go bust. it's going to stayin the records. i think that speakingof education, we should alsoteach young people that there are consequencesthat you pay forever, that going to stay forever. interpreter: iagree, but we should

decide whether we want toeducate young people to things that are happeningnow or to what's going to happen in two decades. sin, repent, shame,guilt are quite important in some countries. many times, i don't thinkit is fair for people to pay the price of theirpast consequences forever. however, even though you havethe right to be forgotten, i think we should educateyoung people to become aware

of the consequencesof their actions. this problem can'tfind a quick solution. this is a profound issue. we should start,initiate changes. for instance, weshould possibly educate people to become quiteattentive to what they publish. if they make amistake, ok, fine. it's not a problem. but in today's society,this may not be true.

if you make amistake, you may have to pay for that mistakefor a long time. eric schmidt: wefinished our first part. we're going to take aquick five minute break, and one of the mostimportant things is questions should go hereto my right over there. please write them out. we'll have plenty oftime for questions. we'll return in five minutes.

i think the firstsession was fantastic and i really appreciateeverybody sticking to the time. we covered a lot of ground. i'd like to begin by introducingour second set of four with our next expert,alessandro mantelero. alessandro is an aggregateprofessor at the politecnico di torino and a facultyfellow at the next center for internet and society. he's a visiting researcherat the berkman center

for internet and society,visiting fellow at the oxford internet institute anda visiting professor at nanjing university ofscience and technology. you've been all over the world. go ahead, professor mantelero. alessandro mantelero:thank you very much. i start with a disclaimer. my speech will be inenglish because there are some terms that are legalterms, so it could be better.

as a scholar, i think that youhave to focus on the problem and then to search fora possible solution rather than discuss in general. the framework-- theframework is characterized by two different rights--the right to be forgotten and the right to erasure. in my opinion, theseare not the same rights. there is a distinctionbetween both these rights. the right to erasureis a wider right

and is not related tothe traditional context of the right to beforgotten that refers to the balance betweenmedia and individual life. there are many otheraspects and attempts of wrongful andillicit processing of personal information that arecovered by the right to erasure and are not covered bythe right to be forgotten. this distinction ithink is necessary. second aspect, alwaysin the framework.

with regard to theright to be forgotten, this right is not a new right. this right still exists bothin europe and in the us. although in the us, there'sa different approach to this right, and hasa less wide extension. a narrower extension. the focus on theright to be forgotten is the balance of interests,as probably you know. but this balancing ofinterests is context related

and is time related. this balance of interests isbased on the current relevance of past events, and it'sbased on the social value of the knowledgeof this past event. if both these elementsare not present, there is not the rightto know and there is the right to be forgotten. if there is not an actualcollective interest, general interestto know something

of the past of yourindividual life, there is not this kindof right to inform. you have to rightto be forgotten. this is recognized ineurope by different courts and is also recognizedin a narrow way by us courts and case law. this is the framework. the problem is represented bythe decision of the european court.

i agree with the decision. i think that it's correctin its fundamental elements. i think that there is alegal basis of this right to be forgotten. but at the same time,i think that there are some problems in the wayin which the court suggests to enforce, to protect,this kind of right, in the practical solution. and at the sametime, i think that it

is a political decision. it is a decisionthat is formally focused on the directivebut looks forward to the new european regulation. the discussion will be on thearticle 17-- more in general, on the provision ofthe new regulation. with regard to this topic, ithink that the solution cannot be the balancing testsmade by a private company, not because thisis not possible.

in the media alone,journalists and the company in the sector of media makethis kind of balancing. but they have aspecific background, and they know the facts. they know if thereis or there is not a collective interestto know this use or not. so they have the skills. they have theprofessional skills to address thesekinds of questions.

google has noticed becausemake another business, in my opinion. it's not a majorcompany, and the second is not an entity that collectsinformation created in use. to make the balanceof interests, you have to know the factand have a direct knowledge of the fact to know if there isor there is not the collateral interest to know that. the solution.

i think that the solutioncould be presented by a specific provision inthe article of the proposal on the right to erasure now. a specific provision,a legal provision, so know i quote mylegal provision. and at the provision,we focus on a sort of temporaryerasure of the link. so when that subjectrequests to enforce his right to be forgotten,the company could

become, for a limitedperiod, 30 days, not show the link in thelists of the results. if within 30 days, youdon't start a legal action in front of an authority--because the balancing tests should be made by anauthority, that the protection authority-- callit like you want. if after 30 days, nobodyhas made this action, the link would be reactivated. if the action starts, the linkwould be in a situation of not

to be shown, and thenis out of the list until the end of the decision. i know that one possible[inaudible] and criticism is that we have alot of requests, and data protection[inaudible] will not be able to addressall of these requests. i think that we havea lot of requests also because we havecreated-- google has created a system that permits tomake a lot of requests.

i think that the accessto code sometimes should be restricted inorder to-- allow the access, permit the access only to peoplethat have a real interest. it's quite differentknowing that we have to make it compliant toa data protection authority, or fill in the blanks ofa form and clicking on it. in the second case, isalso trivial requests should be processed. in the first case, the cost ofthe judicious-- judicial system

limits and selectthe real interest. and the past history in europe--and not only in europe-- is in this sense, i thinkthat google, but also many other companies,addressed in the past the problem with theright to be forgot. there were requestsabout the erasure of specific information, orspecific links and so on, and the number wasnot so high a number. but that kind of requestswere filtered and selected,

and decided by anindependent court, an independent authority. i think this is a balancebetween the interest to protect the user, thesubject, and the interests to permit to companiesto make their business in a privacy-oriented way. i leave one minuteand two seconds free. eric schmidt: let's havesome questions or comments from our panel.

jimmy, would you like to start? jimmy wales: yes. i just have, really, ahistory or a factual question. i wonder if youcould elaborate more on the right to be forgottenin the united states. you mentioned that,and that, i think most people wouldfind surprising. alessandro mantelero:in the united states the right to beforgotten-- again,

the problem is theright to erasure or the right to be forgotten. if you consider theright to be forgotten around the specificdecision by the us courts that recognize theright to-- and also the second statementof the torts-- that recognize your right to hiddenyour past if there is not a public interest to know. some decision and it isn'tsecond statement to torts.

the problem is that in the us,the idea of public records, and the idea offreedom of expression, is broader interpreted thanin many european countries. and so the balancingis quite different. but we have the same rights. the problem is where you putit in the middle, the stick in the middle. so the notion is commonin both-- in my opinion, is common in both ineurope and in the us.

and i also-- istarted this topic with specific [inaudible]. but the difference isthe range, the extension, in which the rightto be forgotten is protected in the us. and looking forwardto the future, i think that alsoin the us, there is an interest inthis field to increase the protection ofprivacy with regard

to past events of your life. so for this reason, i thinkthat we had to find a solution. jimmy wales: i suppose--i was actually looking for something muchmore specific, because i'm unaware ofany court cases in the us that would uphold censorship oflegally published information due to right to be forgottenunder any circumstances. and if there aresuch, it would be very interestingto know about that.

alessandro mantelero:it's not censorship. censorship is quite different. from the "secondrestatement of torts," paragraph 652d, commentk: past event, and so on-- past event and activitiesmust be of legitimate interest to the public, andthe narrative reviving recollection ofwhat has happened. ever many yearsago, my [inaudible] interesting andvaluable for the purpose

of information indication. such lapse of timeis, however, a fact to be consideredwith other facts in determining wherethe [inaudible] goes to unreasonable lengths inrevealing facts about one who has resumed the private,lawful, and unexciting life led by the great bulkof the community. "second restatement of torts." eric schmidt: peggy,you had a question.

peggy valcke:thank you very much for your interestingintervention. i'm intrigued by what youproposed as a solution. so let's have atemporary removal, and if, let's say,within one month you don't start alegal proceeding, the link is restored. but if i understandthe court ruling, that's exactly what mr.costa here has done.

he did start a court ruling,but his problem was still not solved because with regardto the-- with regards to the newspaper, it was decidedthe information was published legitimately, so itshould stay there. but the link was still showingup in the search results when you werelooking for his name. so don't you see a conflictyou with what you propose and the court ruling? how can we solve that dilemma?

alessandro mantelero: thanks. i think that now we areworking without a legal frame around this specific topic. we are working in a systembased on a directive that was approved in 1996 with acompletely different context. for this reason, we had toneed a new provision that considered a specific case. the right to be forgotten, andthe role of search engines. another point that ihave not time to consider

is the role of search engines. i don't think that we couldcompare search engines to a common, generaldata controller. we need a [inaudible] provision. and with a [inaudible] provisionthat defines a process, we have a clear framework,then not the risk that the link will be thenreactivated without any rules by the decision of a court or anorder or the first [inaudible] only appear and so on.

but if there is aspecific provision that defined a part,defined the process, both by the side of the user andthe side of the search engines at the companies, it'sclear what is the process. and we can applywithout any problem. i think that thesituation now is critical because we havenot specific rules. so it goes up withinterpretation. and the risk is to have manydifferent interpretations,

many ways to addressthese issues. i don't know if i've giventhe answer to your question, but i hope. peggy valcke: may i continuewith regard to the procedure that you propose. would it help ifwe would perhaps reverse so the link is removedduring a certain period. and if the source of theinformation, who is now informed, theyget a notification

that links tospecific information have been removedfor certain search-- from certain search results. so if at that moment, thesource of the information doesn't react withina certain period, you leave the link removed. would that-- what do youthink about that approach? alessandro mantelero:i didn't answer if the user has a real interest,an actual interest, to protect

his right to be forgotten,there are two acts to the court or to the protection of torts. if you remove the link, andthe link remains removed, then this could be a long timein which the search engines don't know what to dowith this kind of link. you had to fix a term. it's a legal instrumentin many cases. so like when you buysomething that doesn't work, you have a limitedterms of time.

you decide. or you might exchange thething that doesn't work. because you go to the shopand say, it doesn't work. so you have the time, ashort time, to decide. and during the time-- ipreferred the model in which during the time, theresult is not in the list-- gianni riotta: [whispering]can you be quick? because we've run overtime. can you [inaudible].

alessandro mantelero:--between the requests and the start of the action. because i think thisapproach is more in the interests of the user,that is the weaker part, or is the main interestin this context. eric schmidt: let's have a veryquick question from jose-luis. jose-luis pinar:this is very quick. interpreter: the courtof justice-- let's assume that the court ofjustice has opted

in favor of a veryspecific question. let's considerthe spanish court. and let's assume thatin the case, an object-- the authority, the spanishauthority for the privacy has decided to-- obliged to makeit mandatory for the website to cancel, to erase the data. at that point the questionwould be not only concerning the search engine,but also the website. at that point, i wonderwhat would be your opinion?

according to you, whatwould be the solution? what could the courtof justice decide in the face of both subjects? one is the search engine,and the other is the website. alessandro mantelero: i thinkthat request was addressed to google because we had alsoto consider that there are some cases in which itis not so easy to find the author of the publication,the website master and so. i think that, in myopinion, the court did not

consider-- it considers alsothe aspect of the website. but the request was focusedon the role of google. so i think that there isan implicit assumption. if you make the requestdirectly to that website, there's a traditionalprocess that is always adopted that islimiting the access, modifying the robust[inaudible] file, or other solutionthat were still adopted by the data protection[inaudible] in europe.

and this is the main way. but there are manycases in this-- there are some cases inwhich this is not possible. and so you ask tothe gatekeeper, to google or otherbig companies. again, in myproposal, this system that creates alittle burden also induces the userto reflect if it is not better to askdirectly to the webmaster,

or to the newspaper website. because now what happens,many colleagues that works-- that arelawyer say to me, now the result is thatwe don't make action against each newspaper, butwe make action against google because it is. so this is a wrong approach. i think that google,like many others, should be the lastsolution for specific case

in which you are not ableto identify the order. which-- where you have notthe feedback when the order to not in a country inwhich you are not able to-- is excessive costs to makeinternational legal action, and so on. so we have twodifferent solutions that could work together. and you could seethe-- the user would consider which isthe best solution.

i think that's a--it's a wide topic, not to decide [inaudible]. eric schmidt: we'verun well over. can we go ahead and moveto our next panelist? but thank you verymuch for that, and your specific proposal. i'd like to introducemr. elio catania. he's the chairman of-- isit confindustria digitale? the federation of ictcompanies in italy.

he graduated from with anelectrotechnical engineering from la sapienza here in rome,and he gained his master's degree in management sciencefrom sloan at the mit in boston. he spent most of hismanagement career at ibm, where he ran ibm latinamerica, southern europe, and italy, and became a memberof the worldwide counsel. he has also been chairman andceo of ferrovie dello stato, chairman and ceo of the atmgroup milan transport company,

and deputy chairman of alitalia. talia he served as aboard member and a member of the executive committeeof telecom italia, and as a board memberof intesa sanpaolo. he's a knight of labour. he's a member of the executivecommittee of assonime and the executive committeeof the council of the united states in italy, and a memberof the board of directors for fondazione asphi onius.

so would you like to takethe floor, mr. catania? elio catania: thankyou very much, eric. i have four bulletpoints, two minutes each. i hope i can make it. first, we are hearingin front of a very delicate and substantialquestion, which is how to find the balancepoint between privacy and public interest. and even thoughwe're discussing--

we are concentrating ourconversation around the right to be forgotten, theruling and the consequences of the implicationsare extremely important for theentire web industry. this is a strategic questionwe're discussing here today. to find the right balance point. this requires, in myview, a clear definition, as much as we can,of an objective set the rules, criteria,grades to avoid uncertainties

as management, andcreating instead a transparent and firmenvironment for people and citizens. it's a complex task. very complex task. there are several dimensions,which have to be crossed. the fear, the requester,the matter, the relevance, the timing, theintersection with the laws, with the local laws.

in my view, there isno way a search engine operator, an internetservice provider, and enterprise, aprivate enterprise, can carry this task andthese responsibilities. and this takes meto the second point. there's aresponsibility should be placed on an official,independent institution. better if properly supported. only an officialinstitution, in fact,

can define what arethe best boundaries between public andprivate figures. by the way, a generalstatement could be that public arethose being elected by vote, or in any waycarrying a general interest and responsibility. only an official,independent institution can define what are thematters of general interest. think, for example,to the open data issue

in the public sector. can decide and define whatis the appropriate time frame by matters, by role. only an independent institutioncan define, in cases by the way of publicfigures, what is left anyway in his own public or homepublic, private domain and by the way, onlyan official institution can sort through thecontradictions which have taken place in somecountries where sentences

or ruling can go and overridesome right to privacy, like the recent rulinghere of the supreme court, which make public on theweb all the content of all the sentences inthe civil field. third point. we consider itinappropriate and dangerous to classify a searchengine as an editor, as somebody is stating today. and in general, classifyingan internet service provider

as processing personaldata, in my view, has to be clearly separated. those who generateinformation, and carry the consequent responsibility,from those who can facilitate, who indexes the researchof those [inaudible]. as an industry, we have to avoidto put the burden on operators with impossible tasks, liketo ensure that the data being removed from another platform. how can you do that?

we should notoverburden companies with impossible technicaltasks, like, for example, to give trackable data beingplaces by whatever source in whatever platform. and by the way,in general terms, there is a huge-- let'ssay, political risk or-- and that a policy risk. if we leave with theprivate companies the burden to do thiswork, these tasks, how

many companies canreally do that? only the large corporations. those who have theassets to do that. this means closing the market,while on the other hand, we want to open the market. incent people to invest,even small companies. fourth point. i do not consider appropriatemaking public knowledge of submitted requestsfor consideration,

because we can have theother consequences, which is to give publicity again. while on the otherhand, the issuer of the original informationshould be notified. professional, consumercases, criminal history, should follow similar rules. they should be simple. in conclusion,ladies and gentlemen, i personally believe thatin discussing these issues,

and dealing withyou this issues, we are entering in new,uncharted territories. only through strict cooperationbetween private companies, industry, and publicofficial authorities can we find the best wayto solve this approach. we have to work withsurgical precision here to avoid on one side, the lackof clarity, on the other side, [inaudible], which iswhat we want to avoid, to have the power andopportunity of a free network.

eric schmidt: thankyou very, very much. let's get somecomments and questions. jimmy? you want to start? jimmy wales: yeah,just a quick question. you said that you think thatmaking the request public knowledge should notbe done, but that the website, or that theissuer of the information should be notified.

those seem very much intension with each other. so for example, whenever weat wikipedia receive a notice from google, we publishthe notice immediately. how do you propose to dealwith that sort of situation? elio catania: the issuershould not make public-- you as the issuer should be notifiedthat the reason the decision to cancel thatspecific information from whatever authorities. you, as the issuerof the information

should not make public thatthat has been requested. jimmy wales: so i guesswhat i'm asking is, we do make that public,and will continue to do so. are you proposing that weshould be legally forbidden from doing so? elio catania: if the authorityhas come to the conclusion that there is a rightof an individual that certain information,because of the confident, because of thefigure, because all

the relevancy or the timing,because of whatever criteria, should be eliminated,you should be notified. jimmy wales: that's my question. eric schmidt: david,did you have a question? david drummond: yeah, ijust had a quick question. mr. catania, we'veheard several times around from severalpanelists about whether or not googleshould be the entity that makes these decisions.

we interpret the actual decisionto require us to make those decisions, althoughthat's, of course, not-- the final decisionis not google's. any of these thingscan be appealed to official institutions,as you put it. is it your view, or would itbe your view, that-- would you give advice to google todefer on making decisions on these questions,and have them sort of reject them all so an officialinstitute should look at them?

elio catania: no, i don'tthink you should either defer or refuse to do a duty whichhas been ruled by the supreme but even time i shouldsuggest a company like google, and all the other searchengine organizations, to move to the officialfuture channels to make sure that thesedecisions should be revised. eric schmidt: ok, i see. luciano, you has a comment? luciano floridi: yeah,i'm afraid i'm probably

asking almost the samequestion again and again. so i'm not sure we're gettinga straight answer here. it's always problematic whena philosopher [inaudible] to realism. let me see if i gotyour point right. you aren't saying,you're suggesting-- and i think that probablyapplies to mantelero as well-- that we shouldperhaps institute or identify a so-called independentinstitution to which--

to put in charge of a decisionabout every single request that is sent from now on in thefuture, including the 100,000 requests that havebeen already sent, and the other millionthat will arrive, and in a timelymanner, deal with this? is that the suggestion? elio catania: how to deal withthe transition phase honestly-- luciano floridi: no, no. forget about a transition.

the question is-- elio catania: the final-- luciano floridi: can irepeat answer, just in case you misunderstood. i'm not talkingabout a transition. the question is,are you envisioning a point when an independentinstitution will decide about whether the link shouldor should not be removed, each link, eachrequest, one by one?

elio catania: yes. luciano floridi: thank you. eric schmidt: and thatwas a very clear answer. yes. sabine? elio catania: we are talkinghere of general interest. sabine leutheusserschnarrenberger: are you in favor of europeanregulation for such events, so or to implement theruling, and to find

the right provisionsin, for example, data protection ruling,or something like that? elio catania: you are touchinga very sensitive field, as you know. my answer, ofcourse, would be yes. all these matterswe're discussing, which has to do withnetwork, with the net, with the internet, with dataprotection, with privacy, in my view, cannot be managed inthe future country by country,

but should have aneuropean integrated view. eric schmidt: always. jose- luis? jose-luis pinar: asa representative for the companies, didyou think that it's necessary for the companies,from a global point of view, to have an internationalinstrument, to have very real clear ruleson privacy for all the world, and not only in aspecific impartial

rules or regulations in europe,the states, latin america, et cetera, et cetera. so it's necessary to havean international instrument, binding internationalinstrument, on privacy. elio catania: that's anothervery difficult question in a global economy wheneverything is integrated, of course the finalgoal should be that way. i would be, i tellyou, i would be happy if we have at least a europeanstage-- a first step of that.

eric schmidt: any otherquick interventions? i think that's-- thank youvery much for your comments. i'd like to introduceprofessor oreste pollicino. professor pollicino isan associate professor in the departmentof law at-- is it bocconi university-- in milanwhere he gained his ph.d. in constitutional law. his research areas arein european competitive constitutional law, medialaw, and internet law.

he's an editor of theinternal international journal of communicationslaw and policy, as well as theeditorial committee member of theobservatory of european and comparative privatelaw on conformity to fundamental laws in europe. he is also the founderand managing director of two italian websites, andhas authored numerous essays in this area.

professor? oreste pollicino: many thanks. before starting, justa general statement. and in a way it's goingagainst my own view of constitutional law. it's quiteattracting, attempting the narrative offundamental rights, but it's also really,really tricky, because the rhetoricalfundamental rights--

the fundamental rightsbased argument, it's in a way hiding another problem,the problem of incentive, of foreign corporationsto invest in europe. and the importance of creatinga really european unified market of digital information. so in a way, it'ssomething that i say also regarding my attitudeto elaborate just on the fundamental rightsbased-- very tempting, very sexy-- but sometimesa little bit unproductive.

so let's go to theunproductive, because i will, as you can imagine as aconstitutional lawyer, i will base my speechon constitutional law and fundamental rights. saying something that hasalready been said many times, and i will say another time,the famous balance between-- i don't know if lucian likesvery much this word-- the famous balancebetween freedom of expression and privacy.

in my view it'squite simple balance. the european court ofjustice in this decision gave a kind of, let's say,disproportionate prevalence to the digital right toprivacy and in a way overlooked the protection offreedom of expression. i will add a textualargument of this analysis. the article 11 of europeancharter of fundamental rights has never been quotedin the reasoning. never been explicitly quoted.

whereas article 7 and8 of european charter of fundamental rights have beenquoted several, several times. even granting--this is something familiar to the europeanlawyers-- a direct effect. horizontal direct effect. it's what i tried toelaborate in a paper that i hope you will notbe boring for you to read. having said this, what is veryparadoxical in this judgment? that a fundamentalrights based reasoning

is lacking in something that iscrucial for every legal order based rule of law, likeshould be the european union. that every time there is arestriction fundamental right, should be something that initalian, in italy we called in the constitutional law, reservade jurisdiccion-- reserve jurisdiction. should be a judicialauthority to assess the legitimacy of restriction. in this case, thefirst word that

could become eventhe last one-- this is the point-- the first wordthat could be the last one, it's on the shoulderof a private actors. that is not outside thegame, but it's clearly part of the game. so this is a kind of paradox. having said this, whichcould be the next question, in the shift from the worldof atoms to the world of bit-- using the famous expressionof nicholas negroponte,

"being digital '95"-- in theshift from world of atoms to world of bits, have in a waychanged the degree of judicial protection to the freedom ofexpression granted by courts in the world? very difficultquestion to answer in six minutes and 13 seconds. but maybe it would beinteresting to do an attempt by focusing the first twominutes, the first two minutes and a half onthe first amendment

and the judicial interpretationof the supreme court. in the next minutes focusingon the european courts. everybody knows the holynature of the first amendment. and the questionis, have in a way changed the judicialinterpretation of the supreme court when the protectionfundamental right is not anymore enjoyed in the materialworld but in the digital one? the answer is not. on the contrary,the supreme court

amplified the natureof freedom expression when there was a shiftfrom the world of atoms to the world of bits. just a simple example. reno-- '97. the supreme court in that casesaw the great implication, if not freedom, of the mostprecious way of communication in the world. so moving from the world ofatoms to the world of bits,

there is a farther announcementof the already huge protection of first amendment. what about europe? which is the trend of europe? i already mentioned thatasymmetric balancing of google spain, so i willnot say anything more on that. just saying that this isa confirmation of a lower degree of protectionof freedom expression is confirmed by aprevious case in company

completely other fields. i'm speaking aboutsabam versus scarlet. it's related to copyright. but then also inanother sense you have rhetoric in whichthere is a step farther of economic freedomand a step back of the [inaudible]freedom expression. but now i thinkit's very important. this is a big upsetin this debate

today to move to the case lawof the european court of human rights. because it would bereally partial today to speak about theeuropean constitutionalism, in terms of freedomexpression, just by focusing on theeuropean court of justice. there are many reasons for this. just let me mention one. if you see article53, paragraph 3,

of the european charterof fundamental rights, you will see thatall the provisions of the charter, the same meaningof the european convention of human rights should beinterpreted in the same way. and article 7 of the europeancharter fundamental rights is exactly the sametext of article 8 of the european conventionof human rights. so the europeanconvention of human rights and especially the european--in article 10, in a way,

encapsulated the europeanconstitutionalism view on freedom of expression. it is not holy, is not absolute,but there are limitations. article 10, paragraph[inaudible] states the freedom. article 10, paragraph 2,states the limitation. even in the light of this muchmore restricted view, what is very interesting is that theeuropean court of human rights, in the analog world, tried tostretch as much as possible the potential offreedom expression.

just saying that isthe watchdog of a legal is one of the most preciousrights in our bill of rights. so in a way, even if therewas a textual provision that was rolling against, atleast the relation to first amendment, the federalcourts did what the possible, i would say even the impossible,to stretch the limits. now the last questionis, has in a way changed the attitudeof strasbourg court when the playing field,the field of the game,

moved from the atom to the bits? the answer is yes,something changed. if you look at the caseloadof the last two years in the european court ofhuman rights in relation to freedom ofexpression in internet, you will findsomething very strange. you will see that theeuropean court of human rights has the attitude to justifyrestriction of freedom of expression in the contactstate that would never

be allowed in the analog world. the question is the why. i have not clear answer,but i can just an attempt. if you, i mean, delphicase is just the one case, it's not, by theway, even final, but it's just the lastconfirmation of this trend. i can innumerate then ina paper all the decision. but the real question is why. if you look through thereasoning of the strasbourg

court you will findsomething quite interesting. you will see that thestrasbourg judges are worried about the lack of controlof states with regard to this new-- it'snot so new-- medium, in relation to theold media where the court, where the stateshad a kind of much more strong control. the comparison is clearly withregard to print, broadcasting, and internet.

since on the internet the stateshave not this kind of control, so then there is thisshift of the need to control from adomestic dimension to the supranational one. and then the court leaves muchless margin of appreciation to the states, and takeon its own shoulder the task to control, whichcould be the contrasting rights to freedom expression in orderto get a right balancing. now the question is, isthis the right approach?

i don't know, but i think itwas interesting to contextualize the google spain reasoningin a much wider context. many thanks. eric schmidt: thank you,professsor pollicino. do we have commentsfrom our panel? luciano? luciano will yield thefloor to someone else. luciano, would youlike to go first? since you mentioned themagic word, balance,

at the beginning, whichtogether with the word complex seems to be-- determine thewhole semantics of this debate, i have a questionfor you, which may help us to clarify thedebate for our task. now the word balance putseverybody on the same foot and makes everybody happybecause it's so ambiguous that each of us then interpretsthat word one way or the other. so let me give you threedifferent ways in which we can find a balance, and i liketo understand whether we stand

in one, the other, or the third. balance before uscould be, i want to go to an italianrestaurant, you want to go to afrench restaurant. the balance is we go toa spanish restaurant. balance number two, i likeitalian, you like french. one weekend italian, the otherweekend french, alternatively. there is no spanish food. balance number three,we go to a restaurant

which serves bothitalian and french food. everybody happy. now these are threedifferent policies about going out for food. now when we speak about balance,what do you have in mind? alternate between rights? mix the rights into a thirdright that combines the two, or find a differentright altogether that would put the twointo some kind of harmony?

oreste pollicino: thanks. i would answer withthe vision of balancing that the europeancourt of human rights, or the italianconstitutional courts. balancing means enforcing aprinciple of proportionality. and understanding thatthere are two rights that have a constitutional rank. so there could not be a radicaldefeat of one in relation to the other one.

but it should be appliedproportionally in principle, in particular aself-restrictive-- a less restrictivealternative test. in this case, i think that thecourt didn't enforce or write let's go to spanish. eric schmidt: frank? frank la rue: iunderstand perfectly well when people talk aboutbalance between the exercise of different rights.

and i think it's the rightterm, but it can actually be misconstrued. when we go back to thedefinitions of human rights, that they are all equal andall complementary and all interdependent and interrelated,it may be that there could be other terms-- and i insistnot the balance is wrong or anything like that--but theidea is to have a complementary interpretation. because one of the issuesthat has worries me in all

this discussion is thatyes, in this resolution, there is successiveweight given to privacy on an independent way tothe detriment to freedom but that's not to say thatprivacy is not important. and i have a report where i saythat privacy is very relevant to exercise freedomof expression, because the breachof privacy is what's generating intimidationand a chilling effect, which is one of the issueswe're confronting in the world.

so in a way thereis complementarity in the exercise of rights. and the focus couldbe how to create a positive complementarityand not the detriment, which would seem to come out ofthis decision of the court. oreste pollicino: interestingpoint, just a small remark. i think that here oneof the crucial point is that this decision,it's a reactive one. so if we focus onwhat was before

and why it was thedecision, maybe we can understand whythis radical approach. but, and we knowexactly what happens and which kind of standards. but being a reactiveone, the point is can we really buildevery single relation to internet governance todayon judicial globalization? on the powers ofjudges to create norms in the lack of political powers?

because at the end, it'sa question of legitimacy, of who is putting the rules. eric schmidt: youhad a question? peggy valcke: thank you. thank you, professor pollicino. i hope my question is nottoo legally technical, but can you really blamethe court of justice for not taking intoaccount, for not referring to article 10,freedom of expression,

if that argument was notput forward in the case? strictly speaking,this was a case between mr. costeja and google. and if i read theruling correctly, the balance was made betweenthe individual right to privacy, right to reputationon the one hand, and the commercial interestof google on the other hand, and a kind of collectiveinterest of the public in having access tocertain information.

but there was no balancebetween an individual's right to express him or herself and anindividual's right to privacy. is that correct? is that also how you see it? oreste pollicino: iunderstand what you mean, but i think that thecounter out, or let's say the joe beck of the rightto be forgotten in this case, was clearly the need toaccess some information that could be relevant.

if there is a need toaccess to information and the informationcould be relevant, then there isclearly an expression of freedom expression. and i say this just notbecause it's my impression, but because if you read theconclusion of advocate general jaaskinen in the case, it is thesame case, the same questions. but jaaskinen is making many,many references to article 11 of the european charter.

so somebody ismissing the point. i don't know who. i have some suspicions. eric schmidt: thank youvery much, professor. we have the honor of ourlast expert to talk to us. it's professor vincenzo,is it zeno- zenokovitch? did i get that right? no, i did it wrong. i apologize.

the professor teachescomparative law here in roma, and he's also rector of romeuniversity for international studies, and co editorof the legal periodical, il diritto for informazione,and the legal periodical, il diritto nell' informattica. please go ahead. vincenzo zeno-zencovich:thank you. i wish to thankgoogle for allowing me to present my usuallynonconventional views.

i will try to be ratherbrief and then leave some time for questions. i have eight points. the ecj decision,as many decisions of supreme courts on thisside and the other side of the atlantic, isa political decision. and this decisionasserts eu sovereignty on the internet when it concernseu citizens, contrasting the claim of us sovereigntyby the us government and us

companies. so it is a questionof sovereignty, and questions of sovereigntycan be decided only by diplomacy andinternational agreements. it is not only onedecision by a court which can solve the issue. may i add also that itseems to me personally, having studied this for mostof my-- all my academic life-- a wrong approach to frame theissue which we're discussing

here is with what i would callthe first amendment approach. in europe, we arefar from convinced that everything on the internetis and should be protected. and we feel, this is thegeneral opinion in europe and its tradition,that the internet is like any other physicalplace in the world, and therefore it hasits inevitable share of gossip, garbage,falsehood and vilification. and may i also add thatthe ecj decision is only

in part about theright to be forgotten. i mean here we arediscussing about this, but i think thisis in the decision, the case is a case of theright to be forgotten, but the general implicationof the decision is much wider. and i think to put it onlyunder this idea of the right to be forgotten israther simplistic. it has to do with what,in germany, is called informational selfdetermination.

or, according to italian notion,the right to one's identity. so the removal of searchresults is only one of the ways through whichthis right, informational self determination, or right to one'sidentity, can be protected. i will focus on onespecific aspect. i think one has to distinguish. one cannot find one solution forall the different cases one is presented. i will focus on onetypical case which

presents our self-- at least ifind it in my legal practice. i find it every dayand is extremely common and i don't thinkit's only because i specialize in this field. and one of the mostcommon aspect case is that of news concerning acriminal investigation which subsequently is closed or theaccused person is acquitted. so the originalnews is true, there is a criminal investigation, butsubsequently that news becomes

false because there has been--the person who was accused has been cleared. he has been acquitted. so in this caseand only relating to this case-- i'mtalking about this and not all the otherdifferent cases-- i would like to try to answerto the very stimulating questionnaire thatwas circulated. position of the requester.

i don't think thisis substantial. as a matter offact, one could say that the higher theposition, the more the interest of oneslegal affairs be cleared. content. i think that informationabout judicial proceedings must, i underline must, becorrect, complete, and updated. otherwise the cornerstoneof the rule of law, which is controlledby the courts,

is turned into a formof digital lynching. we're talking about we justthrow things on the internet and we're not interested if thateverything has being changed. we just throw this on andthen we let this news survive. whatever decision the courts,what the courts decide is irrelevant. the only thing is theperson has been accused. and in that moment, that day,that person has been accused. not that he has been acquitted.

recency. the informationwe're talking about, this kind of information,should be corrected and updated as soon as possible so there'sno question of recency. source. i would distinguishamong the sources. experience tells us that themost serious damage is brought generally by unprofessionaland unethical dissemination of information oftenshrouded behind anonymity.

this is a verysignificant problem. when the source insteadcomes from an information institution, i think thatthe removal of the link is, or may be in manycases, a correct balance between competing interest. interest to be informed andbe continuously to have access to certain archives andthe interest of the person of removing informationthat is no longer updated. surely i feel that publishersshould be informed,

and this is something that hascome out of this discussion. or the fact that theremoval has been asked. and i would have, if i couldexpress my personal view, not to overrule obviously thedecision of the grande chambre, i think that a two prongedaction would be preferable. i think that action should be,in these cases of information concerning judicialproceedings, should concern the publisher andthe search action. and sorry, andthe search engine.

and the lack of actionby the former, that is, by the publisher, warrantsthe removal of the link by the latter, thatis, the search engine. the last question,which was set by, and one of the main questionsset by the questionnaire, from a strictlylegal point of view, one could question therule that the search engine is the right entity to bedeciding these requests. i would, as many of usaround the table have,

we have some doubts about that. i personally have some doubts. but from a legalrealistic perspective, power entails responsibility. and somehow thiskind of solution, i would just like topoint out, that is clearly envisaged by thee-commerce directive. although put in adifferent context, but it's clearly established there.

so at any rate, i thinkthat this empowering of a private entity should bean adjudication of last resort. maybe have some comments orquestions from the panel. who would like to start? jose-luis? interpreter: we aretalking about the right now do you think that sincewhen an information, piece of information has beenerased from a search engine, and if that piece of informationstill is on the internet,

still is availableon the internet, the aware personshould be present his own request to cancel that. and not only with respectto a search engine but also in theface of everyone, and especially inthe face of all of the most important subjects,such as google, yahoo, bing, ask, et cetera, et cetera. because the theme,or rather the point,

is not the one of erasing thepiece of data from one engine. but rather the one ofavoiding the knowledge of that information. so there seems tobe a contradiction. everyone has to submit theirrequest only to google. millions of requestsonly to google. but then what's going to happen? shouldn't therebe an obligation? and then is therenot a contradiction

in the fact of justsubmitting the request to one single search engine? vincenzo zeno-zencovich:i've never gone on a different-- everynow and then i, by accident, i end up on a different searchengine and i regret it. if i may say so. and quite correctly you justsay competition is a click away. and i stay well awayfrom that click. and i get furiouswhen i say, you

want this search engineto be your favorite? i say no i do not. i want google. but i think obviouslyyou should request it. i do not have data on howmuch-- well, there is data, but i think we are talking abouta very small part of the market is on those. i think obviously you wouldbe interested to ask removal from also the otherdifferent research engines.

although l feel that in thefield of legal information concerning judicial affairs, ithink the request should also go to the information source. there's an interestingdecision by the italian-- not the constitutionalcourt, but the highest court, the italian corte di casszione,which says that you should, when it comes tothis kind of news, this news should be updated. there's a duty to update.

in that case it was the"corriere della sera." that is a reputablenewspaper, italian newspaper. and the request was thatthe news that was obsolete had to be updated. and this could be-- this isalso one kind of solution that could be given to the problem. sylvie kauffman: you're sayingthat this ruling is about, is also about assertingeuropean sovereignty. but what do you makeof the fact that even

if this ruling is enforced,and links are being taken down, you can still go and find iton another part of google, like google.com. so what does it makeof the sovereignty. vincenzo zeno-zencovich:well, you know that lawyers love latin,and we say, [speaking latin]. that is, if there are someinconveniences, that is not a way to throwaway the solution. i mean this is obviouslya partial solution.

it has been saidvery clearly that one needs global solutions. and my distinguishedcolleague elio catania said we should be satisfied ifwe find a european solution. i think that thisdecision should favor at least atransatlantic dialogue on how to solve these issues. if there's no dialogue betweenthe us and the european union, i doubt we can get to somethingthat's satisfactory for europe

and also for the us. but i don't thinkthis is impossible. one does find in theeuropean solution, i mean the brazil-- takethe solution of the marco seville in brazil, andwhich is a solution which i would expect-- i'm no,but oreste pollicino is an expert in thisfield-- probably will extend to mostof latin america. so i mean, you see we'vedrawn-- and canada is already

a country which is verynear to a european approach. so i think we could sort ofcreate an area in which there is somehow we'regetting together an important part of the world. eric schmidt: peggy,you have a question, and then luciano, you'll get thefinal and very quick question. but peggy, please go ahead. professor zeno-zencovich,i get the impression from your intervention thatyou do consider search engines

as intermediaries and notas service providers who have their own liability, asi believe the court has said. the harm here results notfrom the fact that information was published, butfrom the fact that it's aggregated in a certain way insearch results for someone's name. did i interpret yourintervention correctly? vincenzo zeno-zencovich:i think there should be differentdegrees of liability.

i don't think the onlyway of envisioning liability is how it isframed in the directive, in the privacydirective of 1995. i think that is ofcivil liability, of tortuous liability. one can imagine variousforms of responsibility. let's put it in this terms. not of liability, ofresponsibility, and what you should do toavoid further damage.

i think this is graduation ofremedies is very important. i don't think one can haveonly the damage solution. there's a tort, there's damage. you can have variousways of repairing what damage can be done. and i think, in at least mypersonal experience, clients come to me not for money,but for reputation. they want their reputationsomehow cleared. and no money is going topay their reputation back.

they want, inreputational markets, we need to remove badinformation, which is incorrect, anddamages reputation. and we do not needmoney for that. we need something thatis specific remedies. we do not need monetaryremedies, damage remedies. eric schmidt: lucian,i want you to have the last quick question. luciano floridi: just avery interesting point

you made about,well basically you stress quite extensively theimportance of truthfulness of the information in question. you spoke about the informationbeing complete, correct, up to date. the court ofjustice was actually talking about the relevanceof the information. i just wonder whetheryou had a comment on when the information inquestion is complete,

is correct, is upto date, as in it's a fact, historicalfact, end of story. there is nothing youcan update about that. and yet the decision is, sorry,you had to remove the link. vincenzo zeno-zencovich: iknow we can agree to disagree. your idea is that once you havedone something that is wrong for the rest of thelife, there is-- i've written an articleon how we shifted from the latin notionof damnatio memoriae,

when you were bad, the emperorwas bad and was removed, was killed, all hisemblems were removed. here we have memoriaedamnatio, the opposite. your memory is damned. you're going to be rememberedfor the centuries for what you've done. mr. costeja is goingto be remembered, should be rememberedfor centuries because he has not paidtaxes or welfare taxes.

and i am not of that idea. i think that in contemporarysocieties, naming is shaming. and this is very importantin reputational markets. but does this, is this limited? i mean we have reallyremoved, at least in italy, life sentences. i mean, is the shaming,is it a life sentence? or is the, as has been pointedout before, there's somehow a way of-- we're not going toremove the fact of mr. costeja

did not pay, we do not knowwhy, i do not know why-- his welfare sumsand therefore he was subject to some kind ofprocedure, civil procedure. and say well, let'sforget about it. i mean, what happened happened. let's remove that. if you go on the vanguardiayou will find that news if you want to go and lookfor it on mr. costeja. but we're no going to haveeverybody around the world

i think it isperfect, his request is perfectly legitimate. and i think that, well,generally americans say hard cases make bad law. in this case, i don't know. it surely was a hard case, buti don't know if it was bad law. luciano floridi: i thinkyou agree that we disagree. eric schmidt: and on that note,why don't we take a minute. let's first take a minuteand thank our experts here.

thank you guys very much. we're going tonow move to what i hope will be the highlightof this entire thing, which is your questions. and we have five or sixquestions, and if it's ok, we'll just gostraight into that. some of the questions are morespecific to either an expert or a panelist, and someof them are in general. so let me just, and sincepeople have given our names,

i'll go ahead and namethem if that's ok. this is a questionfrom vera colella. and this is a questionfor everybody. as a partial solution,shouldn't google stop the indexing of archivesof newspapers-- so the archives of newspapers-- so thatnews articles can only be accessed via thearchives themselves. so the questionwas, i'll repeat, this is from one of theaudience members to anyone here.

shouldn't google stop indexingthe archives of newspapers, referring to thehistoric newspapers, so that the newsarticles can only be accessed through thearchives themselves. jimmy. jimmy wales: well, i meanthis would be very, very bad for the people whowere, for example, trying to write wikipedia. also for journalists.

one of the most useful toolsis to go into the google news archives and searchfor some topic, and then you have a collection. if you had to go toeach individual website, you wouldn't even know whichones to go to, in many cases, to find an obscure newsarticle or something like that. so that kind of wholesalecutting off of information doesn't seem to be very fruitfulapproach to solving what actually end up beingfairly rare problems,

particularly withrespect to news archives. eric schmidt: anyother comments? david drummond: i think it seemslike that would just sort of be a blanket application ofthe right to be forgotten, and i think it's probablybetter for the world to do it more narrowly. eric schmidt: our nextquestion is to you, david. it's from giuseppe citarella. will the european courtof justice decision

and the subsequent requestsinfluence google's filtering of information? david drummond: well, to theextent the question is, well are we doing anything asa result of the ruling, the answer is yes. and of course, wehave this process to help guide usin that respect. but in terms ofmore generally, we have since thebeginnings of google

always had a set of strongprinciples around expression. and the fact that the searchengine was about access to information andwe wanted that access to be as broad as possible,while at the same time complying with local laws. there are some local lawswe don't want to comply with and we don't put peoplein those countries, because we simply don't want to. and always doing, complyingwith local laws locally.

we will continue this approach. it's obvious that welitigated this case. we had a different pointof view during litigation, but that's finished. and so with respect to thecourt of justice ruling, we're going to comply with that. but i don't think that willaffect the other things that we do around removals and makingsure that google continues to be this tool for expression.

eric schmidt: myanswer is that it's very important we respectthe decision, which is final, from your europeancourt of justice, but it would have been helpfulif it were a little clearer on some of the details. and i think thereason we're having, we asked our panelbasically to do this is, frankly we need somehelp on these decisions. we didn't ask to beappointed the decision maker.

we were ordered to bethe decision maker. and i have publicly saidthat i didn't particularly like that order. but nevertheless it's the law. david says we follow the law. it's the law. we're following the law. our next question isgiuseppe maostrodonato. and this is to everyone, butin particular the journalists.

and we've got a numberof journalists here that can answer this question. defamation. does the conceptof free expression still apply if we're talkingabout people who defame others? so he's using as an exampleblack hat seo practitioners. to repeat the question, doesthe concept of free expression let's have a journalist. sylvie kauffman: ihave an easy answer

to this becausein france we have very strict laws aboutdefamation and libel. and we have to comply,otherwise we are taken to court. and that is actuallysomething that we find most of thetime quite difficult to deal with becauseit restricts our work. but that is the law in franceand we have to respect it. eric schmidt: go ahead, frank. frank la rue: two yearsago, the four rapporteurs

on freedom ofexpression, and the three regional rapporteurs-- africa,europe, and the americas, and myself from the un-- wemade a joint statement talking about the need todecriminalize defamation. we believe it is importantto have defamation, but this is important to mentionbecause it shows the nuances. defamation is important to haveas a civil action to correct wrong statements, or tocorrect some form of harm, or to ask the judge orderfor a public apology

or for public correction. but not through criminal lawbecause through criminal law it has become basicallyan element of intimidation around the world, and has theso-called chilling effect. so the sole existence ofdefamation as criminal was seen as a limitationon freedom of expression. this is why we believeit was very important. but it's alsointeresting that it was a uniform position ofall regional bodies regarding

freedom of expression. eric schmidt: any othercomments from the journalists? go ahead, professor riotta. gianni riotta:again, in new media, all venues, i love professorzeno-zencovich-- and i promise, mr. schmidt, it's adifficult name for italians as well to pronounce-- but whenyou mention information becomes false if somebody isaccused of something and then is acquitted,well it becomes false

depending on howyou cover the trial. because if you sayhe has been accused and then he's acquitted,it's not false. it becomes false, and we know initaly how many newspapers that, if you are accused,then you're guilty. then is the reckless malice,the american juries would say. so i've suffered mr. schmidt,the web on two sides. i've been on trialas a journalist, and i've been ontrial as a person that

has been defamedas a public figure. so i don't take issue. my son says you're quitecontroversial on google, dad. and i like that, beingcontroversial on google, dad. and again, as sylvie said,it's how you cover the events. if you're in good faith andyou have access to information, and you don't haveany kind of intent of defaming people, whatevercourse the event takes, you will always be fair.

if you enter the fieldwith malicious intents, then eventually you willbe libeling somebody. eric schmidt: let's moveto our next question. this is from, this isactually to professor floridi. so listen up. this is from benedetto ponti. italian legislation requiresthat certain personal data of public officials arepublished and indexed for transparency purposes,and that filter mechanisms

like robots.textmay not be applied. they cannot be filtered. in these cases, the publicinterest in full no ability is enshrined in law. how should googledecide in these cases? should it be case by case, oras indicated by italian law. luciano floridi: this is aquestion for me, eric, really? are you sure? eric schmidt: it was directedto professor floridi.

luciano floridi:i'm sure that you could talk about whatgoogle should or should not do way better than i can. what should we doethically, independently or whatever google would wantto do is at time-- forgive me, this sounds againfrom the other side of the channel-- transparency,a good dose of transparency, is welcome. as in how much you earn, andif you are a public official,

what's your salary. good idea, exactly. what is your salary. it would be open door inother scandinavian countries. so generally speaking,i don't think that we should startthinking in terms of how much information weshould be blocking by default, and let's whatever we donot block, allow on the web. so if the generalanswer can go instead

of answering forgoogle, then i will say, yes of course, themore the better. eric schmidt: thank you. david drummond: iwould just add that i think mr. catania pointedout this contradiction in his remarks. it's an interesting case. i think if we have somethingthat's two conflicting laws, we'll have to-- ithink that seems

like the perfect casefor a court to resolve. and us. eric schmidt: our next questionis from mario siragusa, and this is to everyone. why shouldn't googledecide on delinking? if the decision is public,subject to judicial review, and editors and publisherscan participate, than this is similarto what already happens in other situations insociety-- network access,

essential facilities. so as i interpret the question,the rhetorical question is why shouldn't googletry this decision? anyone want to try this? sylvie? sylvie kauffman: no, i'mnot sure i can answer this, but the question says,if editors and publishers participate, that's not whatthe court's ruling is about. and may i answerwith another question

to one of the panelists? i think it's mr.mantelero who said, who talked about theskills that the media have, and those skills for judgingwhat is the right balance. and that google doesn'thave those skills. search engines don'thave those skills. could you, i wouldbe curious to have your more detailed assessmentof what those skills have to be. alessandro mantelero:my statement

is based on the case law,and the case law, usually the action is against thejournalists or the newspaper. and the idea is thatwhat is the skill. the question aboutright to be forgotten is about the disclosureof the facts. not exactly aboutthe disclosure. about new disclosure ofpast events, past facts. so there are two situations. the first one, in the pastthere was a public interest

and newsworthinessof the information. and was revealed. then after 5, 10,20 years, there is a new publicationof the information. and the journalistsare in a position to evaluate if inthat case, there is an interest toreveal some new facts. and also to remember the past. for instance, if apolitician is involved

in a case of corruption,but in the past he was involved in othernegative situations, there's a clear interestto know his past, even if there is his past a longtime from the previous facts. i try to simplify. there are many different nuancesof this right to be forgotten. so please accept thisas a simplification. but this is the idea. this balance isbased on the idea

to know what is thepublic interest in terms of collective interest,not in terms of curiosity. and the second point isto balance the interests about information. i think that journalistshave an adequate professional background to do that. and they are in the bestposition to do that. and they do that as demonstratedby many case law decisions and so on, as also at thepractice in this field.

i think that a company likegoogle cannot do the same, because it is not in theposition to have that direct knowledge of the facts. google did notmake the interview. did not make theresearch about the facts. only listed the results. and that's not thespecific ground that a journalist, interms of profession, has. this is, i don't know, is anadequate answer, [inaudible]

but this is the point. thank you very much. let's move to our next question,which is from camellia bulong. and this is to thoseon the panel who support the court's decision. which is more important,the right to privacy, or the right to security? so i'll repeat that. and this is intendedfor those who

which is more important, theright to privacy or the right to security? yes? frank, you have your mic on. frank la rue: i'mgoing to be very brief. there is a report i wroteon privacy and security to the human rightscouncil in june last year. but basically thepoint i make is that there is no contradiction.

real privacy is a fundamentalelement of democracy. and security needs democraticsystems of checks and balances. if we generate securitywithout democracy, what we're generating isauthoritarian regimes. and therefore they canviolate privacy and intervene communications, and that's notthe type of security we want. so there should be no conflictbetween security and privacy because both privacyand security should need the reinforcement ofdemocracy, which also needs

the respect forfreedom of expression. eric schmidt: sabine. sabine leutheusserschnarrenberger: one remark. i think i have another opinion. because we arediscussing in politics always privacy on the one handand security on the other hand. and at the endyou have to find-- you have to come to the end,you have to make a conclusion. and not both together,it's not possible.

so at the end, it's my opinionprivacy provides security. jose-luis pinar: to remembera quote by benjamin franklin. he said that those who tryto choose between privacy and security deserveboth of them. eric schmidt: preserve,yes, that's very good. luciano floridi: justa dissenting opinion on the poor franklin. i think he was wrong. we should definitely chooseprivacy above anything else,

and security onlyas a second choice. eric schmidt: while ilook up the exact quote, let's-- i hope the correctanswer is always democracy. and this is aquestion from someone who chose to remain anonymous. and it's a questionto everyone, and this will be our final question. shouldn't google keep a publicregister of every removal request, without disclosingpersonal information,

for transparency purposes? so should keep a publicregister, in other words a public registerof what was removed, without the information,for transparency purposes. jimmy, you must havean opinion on this. jimmy wales: yes, imean i think that google has for a very long timehad an admirable record of transparency aboutall kinds of things. they send dmca takedownnotices to chilling effects,

and so on like this. i think in this case, froman ethical point of view, it's a little bit moreof a delicate situation. and obviously from alegal point of view, they aren't free todisclose everything. but even if we moveback from that, i think it's importantthat google provide us as much information as theycan in compliance with the law, with an awareness that many ofthe people who are complainants

aren't up to nogood or anything. they have a genuineconcern, and there's no reason to name and shamepeople for that sort of thing. so i mean somewherein the middle, and i trust this is essentiallywhat google has always done and will continue to do. eric schmidt: did you wantto say anything, david, on google's-- david drummond: since it isabout google and transparency,

we actually planto do just that, subject to the constraintsjimmy's talking about. and in this case,transparency with detail obviously wouldundermine the very right that the court wastrying to protect. but we do publish a transparencyreport, as many of you know, and we expect that theaggregate numbers that we're talking about interms of the removals we've done as a resultof the court opinion

will be included in that report. so as with everything, we liketo be as transparent as we can. eric schmidt: are thereany final comments from the experts or thepanel before we wrap up? i want to thank-- i'msorry, frank, go ahead. you'll have the finalcomment, so make it good. frank la rue: literallytwo quick words. this came to mind whenthe discussion on privacy and security cameabout, but this also

deals with privacy and freedomof expression and the balance. i think what we havelearned in human rights in the long run is you canpit one right against another. we're talking about a democraticsystem that defends all. not by pieces and not by bits,because then you end up losing. you have to defend thedemocratic system where all rights are essential,and all fundamental rights have to be respected. and that shouldbe the big lesson.

we cannot, in the nameof one, sacrifice others, because then we lose what wehave so slowly in humanity gained. eric schmidt: that'sextremely well said. and mr. catania wouldlike to add something. elio catania: yeah, eric. in the beginning youtold us to eliminate all preambles and whatever,just to be more effective. and now that we'rein the conclusion,

let me just congratulatewith the way google is dealing with this issue. it's not an easy task. i know you've beenassigned this strange work. the way you're dealing ina very transparent manner, with the support of peoplelike your council, consulting experts, i think it'sreally a tremendous proof of openness and commitment. thanks.

and i want to thank--i'm quite serious to say that it takes a lotof time to do this. first, our panelhas dedicated, we have i think a total ofseven sessions around europe. and then an innumerablenumber of private meetings that you all arenot hearing about, where these guys are goingto try to sort of come back with sort of this very, verydifficult guidance for us. i want to thank the experts.

to say that i love italywould be an understatement, because i lived herefor quite some time. and so it's just, for me,it's just a great privilege to be here with you all. and to the audience,thank you for being this. we've run over alittle bit, but i hope it was wellworth your time. so thanks again to everybody,and we're finished for the day.

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