5 ms·
> At what point does one's right to be forgotten supersede another's right to remember? > > If Alice knows something about Bob because of their personal intera
by wlll 8y ago
> At what point does one's right to be forgotten supersede another's right to remember?
>
> If Alice knows something about Bob because of their personal interactions, as he asks her to forget about it, but she still remembers it, is she violating Bob's right to be forgotten?
>
> etc.
No, no-one can force you legally to forget something, and I think this brings up the main problem with your argument, which is that we're not talking about Alice and Bob, we're talking about Alice and Bob's Widgets INC.
I'm technically minded and I see a 100% separation between the interaction between Alice and Bob, and Alice and Bob's Widgets INC. Yes, I do think it's completely reasonable for Alice to ask bob to be removed from log files, journals whatever.
Lets look at a parallel you drew:
> More concretely, suppose Bob visits Alice's house, and then a couple of weeks later tells Alice that she must forget that he visited. If she ignores his request is she violating Bob's rights?
I wouldn't say that Alice is violating anyone's rights here. Being unreasonable, yes. Asking for something with no legal or enforceable basis, yes.
> Now suppose Bob is visiting Alice's website, which records his IP address in a log file. Bob asks to be removed from the log, and again Alice ignores his request.
This is a non sequitur, these are different scenarios with different requests, just with the names kept the same. Businesses aren't people, and they don't have memories like people. Businesses don't (for the most part, legal actions notwithstanding) need IP address information. It can be helpful, certainly. Knowing your customer has returned, knowing what they have looked at etc., but it's not essential.
So yes, it's reasonable to ask for removal from logs, and no, it isn't reasonable to ask someone to forget you visited their house.
- pluma 8y agoI guess this demonstrates a prime example of one of the biggest differences in the US: In the US, corporations are people. In the EU, corporations are legal persons but don't inherently enjoy the same rights/protections as natural persons (i.e. humans). Just remember the Hobby Lobby ruling: in the US, corporations can have religious beliefs. In the EU that sentence doesn't make any sense because a corporation cannot hold beliefs (though the people employed by or owning it can).
- tripzilch 8y ago> In the US, corporations are people. > in the US, corporations can have religious beliefs. In the EU that sentence doesn't make any sense because -- It doesn't make sense because in the EU we didn't artificially create a legal construct to support the notion of corporations having religious beliefs (or "being people"). Please don't act as if both ideas are equally valid descriptions of the real world when one of them is strictly a legal fiction and completely meaningless in any other sense. I'm sorry but just like the notion that a 2-person startup would need $300/h lawyers for any significant amount of time to ascertain they're sufficiently in compliance with the GDPR to not get sued into oblivion (.. or something? over here people can just read and implement the needed provisions by themselves in under a week, is what I heard from my friends in the business), this seems to be a problem inside the US legal system, doesn't really seem to me like it's the EU's problem to take into account when it's broken like that.
- pluma 8y agoI'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just trying to be objective rather than judge the two models based on my opinion. My opinion would be that the US system is the result of Friedman free market capitalism trumping civil rights over decades. And in Europe I'd consider myself libertarian.
- cpitman 8y agoWhat if it is a personal website, not affiliated with any corporation?
- xenomachina 8y ago> No, no-one can force you legally to forget something, and I think this brings up the main problem with your argument, which is that we're not talking about Alice and Bob, we're talking about Alice and Bob's Widgets INC. I assume you mean Alice's Widgets INC., since Alice was the one with the website. But in any case, I didn't say "Alice's business's website". I said "Alice's website", as in her personal website. Are you saying that an individual's website can record visitor's IP addresses and store them indefinitely, but a business cannot?