6 ms·

I don't know about the US, but over here in the Netherlands any service must respond to a request to remove your records. They must comply, or provide a very go

by jvdh 17y ago

I don't know about the US, but over here in the Netherlands any service must respond to a request to remove your records. They must comply, or provide a very good reason why your comments/submissions must remain. (In discussions comments can stay if required for the discussion to make sense, but the name has to go).

jacquesm 17y ago
His name isn't there, it's just a non-specific alias. I read it to mean 'dave australia', if he is actually called 'dave au' then that's slightly different.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
jrockway 17y ago
HN is not in the Netherlands, so this is completely irrelevant. (Just like when some company in the US sends a DMCA takedown notice to the Netherlands.)
- stingraycharles 17y ago
  He wasn't implying that Dutch law was valid in the US, he was simply stating that because perhaps there is some similar law in the US (hence the "I don't know about the US"). Besides, does one really need to provide a valid reason to delete an account ? Isn't "just because" good enough ?
- authentic 17y ago
  technically, YC has a European subsidiary (a startup funded by them).
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    So ? Europe != NL. And even if, a subsidiary incorporated independently is not going to be liable for acts of the parent company unless they are actively engaged in the same activity. And in this case they would not be, Ycombinator owns and runs the forum, that startup does its own thing.
    - authentic 17y ago
      you misunderstood. it can be argued that once YC has established a sufficient nexus within a particular country it can be held to its laws (in this case, DE data protection and privacy laws which are far stricter than those of NL, afaik). on a much larger scale, watch for the impending fight between the EU commission and facebook about this very issue.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        No, you misunderstood the law. A startup funded by YC would never ever be seen as a subsidiary. Google NL BV can be held to the law with respects to google.com, but some start up that google funds will never be used to hold google.com to NL law.
        authentic 17y ago
        Not at all saying the subsidiary would be held responsible here (they are not operating the website in question anyway), it does however affect the question whether the parent is conducting significant business in a particular country. Whether this is practically enforceable (like the UK libel judgement against Arrington personally) is a different matter. For me personally, pg acting on account and data deletion requests would simply be an act of courtesy that we can expect from him.
        jacquesm 17y ago
        > Not at all saying the subsidiary would be held responsible here (they are not operating the website in question anyway), Good, because the answer to that is clearly 'no', but > it can be argued that once YC has established a sufficient nexus within a particular country it can be held to its laws (in this case, DE data protection and privacy laws which are far stricter than those of NL, afaik). Suggested clearly otherwise, so it looks like you have changed your stance on that. > Whether this is practically enforceable (like the UK libel judgement against Arrington personally) is a different matter. Arrington was personally liable, which is a completely different thing than the one you are talking about right now. > For me personally, pg acting on account and data deletion requests would simply be an act of courtesy that we can expect from him. I disagree with you. A free, online forum is exactly what it seems, a place where your opinion can be expressed and will distribute your opinion to strangers. Expectations like this is what drives the weird terms-of-service that many websites have, the overhead on the kind of activity deployed and the income generated from that preclude manual intervention on behalf of every Tom, Dick and Harry that decide they want to rewrite history after the fact. Besides it being simply a lot of work. If you do not want your words to be stored in an online service, do not put them there in the first place. Fora are especially important in that they serve as means of communication, in effect you are asking to be able/allowed to retract your statements after any arbitrary period of time. If that were to be actually enforceable the only thing that would change would be the terms of service, getting you to agree explicitly with the giving up of that particular right since it completely renders the whole forum concept moot. Every thread topic ever started by a user that requests to delete their content, every answer to every comment they ever wrote would suddenly stop making sense. news.yc gives you an hour after you post to retract your words, if you do not wish to make use of that right then it lapses, which I think is a really nice medium between the two worlds.
Confusion 17y ago
A real name has to go, but there is no requirement to remove a nickname or an account.
- authentic 17y ago
  regulation outside the US may not apply here but this is not how the law works in the EU, which deals with the data itself rather than just identification. not too long ago I compelled a telco who had pissed me off to send me a 200 page dump of all the data they had about me and subsequently delete all of it, using the legal system after they had initially refused.
  - Confusion 17y ago
    Not on online forums where you need to agree with a halfway decent User Agreement before you can open an account. You grant the forum copyright on your posts. There is, for instance, no way to get your posts removed from Anandtech's forum, if they don't want to. You get them anonimized at best.
    - authentic 17y ago
      a user agreement cannot override statutory rights.
      - Confusion 17y ago
        Of course it can. Contracts and other agreements limit your rights in some way. That's the whole point of signing an an agreement: mutually agreeing to something that isn't guaranteed by any other existing law.
        authentic 17y ago
        There are many rights that can in fact not be signed away. You have no idea what you are talking about, do you? http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/ http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/

by jvdh 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

His name isn't there, it's just a non-specific alias. I read it to mean 'dave australia', if he is actually called 'dave au' then that's slightly different.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

jrockway 17y ago

HN is not in the Netherlands, so this is completely irrelevant. (Just like when some company in the US sends a DMCA takedown notice to the Netherlands.)

stingraycharles 17y ago
He wasn't implying that Dutch law was valid in the US, he was simply stating that because perhaps there is some similar law in the US (hence the "I don't know about the US"). Besides, does one really need to provide a valid reason to delete an account ? Isn't "just because" good enough ?
authentic 17y ago
technically, YC has a European subsidiary (a startup funded by them).
- jacquesm 17y ago
  So ? Europe != NL. And even if, a subsidiary incorporated independently is not going to be liable for acts of the parent company unless they are actively engaged in the same activity. And in this case they would not be, Ycombinator owns and runs the forum, that startup does its own thing.
  - authentic 17y ago
    you misunderstood. it can be argued that once YC has established a sufficient nexus within a particular country it can be held to its laws (in this case, DE data protection and privacy laws which are far stricter than those of NL, afaik). on a much larger scale, watch for the impending fight between the EU commission and facebook about this very issue.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      No, you misunderstood the law. A startup funded by YC would never ever be seen as a subsidiary. Google NL BV can be held to the law with respects to google.com, but some start up that google funds will never be used to hold google.com to NL law.
      - authentic 17y ago
        Not at all saying the subsidiary would be held responsible here (they are not operating the website in question anyway), it does however affect the question whether the parent is conducting significant business in a particular country. Whether this is practically enforceable (like the UK libel judgement against Arrington personally) is a different matter. For me personally, pg acting on account and data deletion requests would simply be an act of courtesy that we can expect from him.
        jacquesm 17y ago
        > Not at all saying the subsidiary would be held responsible here (they are not operating the website in question anyway), Good, because the answer to that is clearly 'no', but > it can be argued that once YC has established a sufficient nexus within a particular country it can be held to its laws (in this case, DE data protection and privacy laws which are far stricter than those of NL, afaik). Suggested clearly otherwise, so it looks like you have changed your stance on that. > Whether this is practically enforceable (like the UK libel judgement against Arrington personally) is a different matter. Arrington was personally liable, which is a completely different thing than the one you are talking about right now. > For me personally, pg acting on account and data deletion requests would simply be an act of courtesy that we can expect from him. I disagree with you. A free, online forum is exactly what it seems, a place where your opinion can be expressed and will distribute your opinion to strangers. Expectations like this is what drives the weird terms-of-service that many websites have, the overhead on the kind of activity deployed and the income generated from that preclude manual intervention on behalf of every Tom, Dick and Harry that decide they want to rewrite history after the fact. Besides it being simply a lot of work. If you do not want your words to be stored in an online service, do not put them there in the first place. Fora are especially important in that they serve as means of communication, in effect you are asking to be able/allowed to retract your statements after any arbitrary period of time. If that were to be actually enforceable the only thing that would change would be the terms of service, getting you to agree explicitly with the giving up of that particular right since it completely renders the whole forum concept moot. Every thread topic ever started by a user that requests to delete their content, every answer to every comment they ever wrote would suddenly stop making sense. news.yc gives you an hour after you post to retract your words, if you do not wish to make use of that right then it lapses, which I think is a really nice medium between the two worlds.

Confusion 17y ago

A real name has to go, but there is no requirement to remove a nickname or an account.

authentic 17y ago
regulation outside the US may not apply here but this is not how the law works in the EU, which deals with the data itself rather than just identification. not too long ago I compelled a telco who had pissed me off to send me a 200 page dump of all the data they had about me and subsequently delete all of it, using the legal system after they had initially refused.
- Confusion 17y ago
  Not on online forums where you need to agree with a halfway decent User Agreement before you can open an account. You grant the forum copyright on your posts. There is, for instance, no way to get your posts removed from Anandtech's forum, if they don't want to. You get them anonimized at best.
  - authentic 17y ago
    a user agreement cannot override statutory rights.
    - Confusion 17y ago
      Of course it can. Contracts and other agreements limit your rights in some way. That's the whole point of signing an an agreement: mutually agreeing to something that isn't guaranteed by any other existing law.
      - authentic 17y ago
        There are many rights that can in fact not be signed away. You have no idea what you are talking about, do you? http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/ http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/