3 ms·
Why can't the EU produce easy to follow guidelines and examples and make the process fair? Right to be forgotten shouldn't be about taking down the information
by undecisive 7y ago
Why can't the EU produce easy to follow guidelines and examples and make the process fair?
Right to be forgotten shouldn't be about taking down the information, but protecting those involved.
For example, let's take Grievous bodily harm. If a journalistic source reports on a GBH case (such as this), we could come up with some rules that say the publisher has the right to include:
- identifying details about "incidentals" - e.g. the victim (e.g. Name) or location (e.g. Business name) for 3 years after the event. After that, they must replace it with generalities - "A 39 year old man", "A restaurant on Letsby Avenue". Must ensure that an individual person or business cannot be identified from the generalized description without significant legwork.
- identifying details about the perpetrator for a number of years after the first article is published - at least 6. Their age should be a consideration here - if a 90 year old stabs someone at dinner, I'd expect that to be generalized after 5 years. If a 20 year old stabs someone at dinner, I'd expect that to survive for 20 years. So assuming we now have a number between 6 and 20, if the person was not convicted, that number should be halved.
Once that's done for various classes of crimes, the process should be cheap and easy - the publisher should be sent a letter by the subject or someone with a vested interest in the article and request that the article be redacted. Provided they give enough information, the publisher should be able to look up the guidelines and either agree or reply with a reason. If they refuse, they can be taken to court.
On a broader note, this is just another way that GDPR is broken. It feels like the lawmakers wanted it to cover so much, that they wanted to right wrongs so badly, that they didn't care who would get hurt in the process. Almost retaliatory lawmaking.