4 ms·

You are confusing two separate issues. Social Networks and Search Engines are not sources of administrative data. A CEO cannot bury that he was sued as the ma

by ZenPro 12y ago

You are confusing two separate issues. Social Networks and Search Engines are not sources of administrative data. A CEO cannot bury that he was sued as the matter is a public record. Should he be able to have that information removed from search engines who provide no context and social media accounts he owned? Absolutely.

Sanddancer 12y ago
The biggest issue I have here is one of fundamental honesty and equality in the legal system. By creating a system where someone with enough money and lawyers can make their past problems disappear, you only serve to make the legal playing field more unequal than it already is. Additionally, it starts creating much bigger questions as to where the line should be drawn. Should legal search services like LexisNexis also be bound by decisions like this? Should case records only be available to those that can afford to go to the courthouse on alternate Tuesdays between the hours of 9 and 10? In the end, this case only harms the law. The big still have access to the same data they always did, the small people are shut out again.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  No, the biggest obsession you seem to have from your multiple comments in this thread is some sort of belief in absolute justice. Without the ability to forget our past mistakes, we are forever defined by them. You seem to be begging for that to happen. You want to destroy someone's life forever. Everyone needs a chance to rehabilitate, whether or not they were guilty or successfully prosecuted or not. Does it matter that this man wants to forget whatever shame this caused him? I actually find it disgraceful that you have deliberately used his name in two of your comments. At the time of writing almost 10% of comments in this thread are from you. What has happened to you to make you so broken and incapable of forgiveness?
  - Sanddancer 12y ago
    My problem is that he's kicking and screaming in the courts, trying to make the fact that he had a tax dispute go away. Had he said nothing, I doubt anyone, even in his hometown would have cared all that much about the issue. Instead, he's chosen to bully people into removing facts about him because they're no longer convenient to him. Everyone makes mistakes, lord knows I have, but part of learning from them, and rehabilitation, is admitting that mistakes do happen, which this man seems incapable of. I use his name because I'm tired of seeing well-heeled individuals throw their weight around in the court system. I use his name because he wishes to subvert public discourse. I use his name because he has chosen to make himself a public figure with his suit. Why should I respect someone who has chosen to disrespect the concepts of free speech, of open government, and of a fair society?
    - phillmv 12y ago
      >I use his name because I'm tired of seeing well-heeled individuals throw their weight around in the court system. Are you comparing the resources of a single individual against that of Google? Is the guy a billionaire? >Had he said nothing, I doubt anyone, even in his hometown would have cared all that much about the issue. Well, it would've been present for anyone to google. How much faith do you have in your capacity to defend well page-ranked libellous information against yourself? Part of rehabilitation is also not being permanently associated with your mistakes.
    - ronaldx 12y ago
      If your private financial information was published online, you should have the legal right to have it removed. Private financial information does not belong online. Do you believe, for example, your bank should have the legal right to publish the historical accounts of all of its customers tomorrow? Should that be protected by the right to free speech? Almost nobody would think that was acceptable, because private information is private. Data Protection of private data is a legal idea that we generally accept in Europe, even if we don't do a good job of enforcing it (as perhaps we haven't here). You should also have a right to legal access that would allow you to ensure your legal rights were upheld without worrying about the cost, but that is a separate issue which is really nothing to do with this guy.
  - mpyne 12y ago
    > Without the ability to forget our past mistakes, we are forever defined by them. On the other hand, it will never be possible for all such people to cover-up all such information about them. So the real solution (a societal recognition that no one is perfect) is still required. If anything it would be easier for the truly crooked to pass off as "reformed".
  - fixermark 12y ago
    > Without the ability to forget our past mistakes, we are forever defined by them. You seem to be begging for that to happen. Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. If anything, we should be pulling for a system for undesired past information to be easily correlated with subsequent information (an ability to comment on a search result, perhaps?)... Not a world where we try and erase or bury the past. To do so is to damage truth itself. We should address the problem of partial correlation with better correlation, not less correlation.
mike_hearn 12y ago
Why do search engines provide no context? That seems remarkably arbitrary. This notion that it's right and proper for information to be theoretically available in some technical sense, but it's bad that it be actually findable and usable, is absurd.
- ZenPro 12y ago
  I never said that. You are reading into my comments the bias that you want to see. Data for bankrupt individuals, disgraced corporate directors, criminal trials and legislation existed before Google - it existed in open repositories that anyone who had a valid reason could inspect. No license was required other than being a citizen. Search engines provide no context because alongside credible and relevant information they will also display non-credible, libellous, inaccurate and harmful information. If you can design a search engine that can filter for veracity then this law will not be required. Until then - it is.
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    But the data about Mr Gonazalez was true. So a search engine that filtered for veracity would not have solved his "problem". This isn't about context or truth or people's feelings being hurt by bad things being said about them. This whole episode is just bizarre. There's a statement of fact about him, in a newspaper, and it comes up when you search his name. Apparently he did nothing else of note (except this court case) so what else should be displayed? Nothing? What's the point of a search engine that doesn't give you factually correct and relevant results?
    - ZenPro 12y ago
      A positive result does signify the absence of negative results. You are displaying conformation bias. Put in legal terms; it is better for 10 guilty men to go free than 1 innocent man be incarcerated. You are fixated on Gonzalez and he is a footnote in the wider issue which you seem incapable of grasping. You wanted to find a search result that returns evidence of immoral or illegal behaviour. That does not exonerate Google from indexing the multitude of libellous, false and damaging materials that it has.
floppydisk 12y ago
> Should he be able to have that information removed from search engines who provide no context and social media accounts he owned? Absolutely. By the same logic one should also provide a means for people to protest indexes and tables of content in published literature. Opening a prominent business publication's table of contents and seeing a headline "CEO sued" provides no context and social media accounts he owned. However, we would argue freedom of the press and that since it is a print publication its simply recording a matter of public record. You've never been able to hide from your past, good or bad. If someone was motivated they could do the manual labor necessary to dig -- review publications, talk to relatives, visit past schools, talk to the local PD and such. Simply having Google erase its table of contents pointing to an article discussing past indiscretions doesn't make them go away or unrecoverable. What makes people uneasy is the relative ease at which Google et. al. make discovering past indiscretions, lawsuits, and other public information possible. The two questions that really need answering are should the past be easily searchable -- the information itself will never go away -- and how should that past information color the future?
- ZenPro 12y ago
  That is a fair point and well reasoned. I look at the issue less conspiratorially than some of the other posters. Whenever the law is changed, a party somewhere, is always quick to claim the political elite will benefit. In it's current guise I support the ability of people to have inaccurate information about their character removed from search rankings/indexing services. It boils down to the oft-thorny issue of what is reasonable? I do not think it is reasonable to have cases removed records. I do think it is reasonable to have published media that portrays an innocent party as guilty removed from publication. I don't know how that is accomplished but this legislation seems to be moving in broadly the right direction. I can see it being used to right more wrongs than vice versa but I am an optimist.

by ZenPro 12y ago

Sanddancer 12y ago

The biggest issue I have here is one of fundamental honesty and equality in the legal system. By creating a system where someone with enough money and lawyers can make their past problems disappear, you only serve to make the legal playing field more unequal than it already is. Additionally, it starts creating much bigger questions as to where the line should be drawn. Should legal search services like LexisNexis also be bound by decisions like this? Should case records only be available to those that can afford to go to the courthouse on alternate Tuesdays between the hours of 9 and 10? In the end, this case only harms the law. The big still have access to the same data they always did, the small people are shut out again.

mattmanser 12y ago
No, the biggest obsession you seem to have from your multiple comments in this thread is some sort of belief in absolute justice. Without the ability to forget our past mistakes, we are forever defined by them. You seem to be begging for that to happen. You want to destroy someone's life forever. Everyone needs a chance to rehabilitate, whether or not they were guilty or successfully prosecuted or not. Does it matter that this man wants to forget whatever shame this caused him? I actually find it disgraceful that you have deliberately used his name in two of your comments. At the time of writing almost 10% of comments in this thread are from you. What has happened to you to make you so broken and incapable of forgiveness?
- Sanddancer 12y ago
  My problem is that he's kicking and screaming in the courts, trying to make the fact that he had a tax dispute go away. Had he said nothing, I doubt anyone, even in his hometown would have cared all that much about the issue. Instead, he's chosen to bully people into removing facts about him because they're no longer convenient to him. Everyone makes mistakes, lord knows I have, but part of learning from them, and rehabilitation, is admitting that mistakes do happen, which this man seems incapable of. I use his name because I'm tired of seeing well-heeled individuals throw their weight around in the court system. I use his name because he wishes to subvert public discourse. I use his name because he has chosen to make himself a public figure with his suit. Why should I respect someone who has chosen to disrespect the concepts of free speech, of open government, and of a fair society?
  - phillmv 12y ago
    >I use his name because I'm tired of seeing well-heeled individuals throw their weight around in the court system. Are you comparing the resources of a single individual against that of Google? Is the guy a billionaire? >Had he said nothing, I doubt anyone, even in his hometown would have cared all that much about the issue. Well, it would've been present for anyone to google. How much faith do you have in your capacity to defend well page-ranked libellous information against yourself? Part of rehabilitation is also not being permanently associated with your mistakes.
  - ronaldx 12y ago
    If your private financial information was published online, you should have the legal right to have it removed. Private financial information does not belong online. Do you believe, for example, your bank should have the legal right to publish the historical accounts of all of its customers tomorrow? Should that be protected by the right to free speech? Almost nobody would think that was acceptable, because private information is private. Data Protection of private data is a legal idea that we generally accept in Europe, even if we don't do a good job of enforcing it (as perhaps we haven't here). You should also have a right to legal access that would allow you to ensure your legal rights were upheld without worrying about the cost, but that is a separate issue which is really nothing to do with this guy.
- mpyne 12y ago
  > Without the ability to forget our past mistakes, we are forever defined by them. On the other hand, it will never be possible for all such people to cover-up all such information about them. So the real solution (a societal recognition that no one is perfect) is still required. If anything it would be easier for the truly crooked to pass off as "reformed".
- fixermark 12y ago
  > Without the ability to forget our past mistakes, we are forever defined by them. You seem to be begging for that to happen. Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. If anything, we should be pulling for a system for undesired past information to be easily correlated with subsequent information (an ability to comment on a search result, perhaps?)... Not a world where we try and erase or bury the past. To do so is to damage truth itself. We should address the problem of partial correlation with better correlation, not less correlation.

mike_hearn 12y ago

Why do search engines provide no context? That seems remarkably arbitrary. This notion that it's right and proper for information to be theoretically available in some technical sense, but it's bad that it be actually findable and usable, is absurd.

ZenPro 12y ago
I never said that. You are reading into my comments the bias that you want to see. Data for bankrupt individuals, disgraced corporate directors, criminal trials and legislation existed before Google - it existed in open repositories that anyone who had a valid reason could inspect. No license was required other than being a citizen. Search engines provide no context because alongside credible and relevant information they will also display non-credible, libellous, inaccurate and harmful information. If you can design a search engine that can filter for veracity then this law will not be required. Until then - it is.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  But the data about Mr Gonazalez was true. So a search engine that filtered for veracity would not have solved his "problem". This isn't about context or truth or people's feelings being hurt by bad things being said about them. This whole episode is just bizarre. There's a statement of fact about him, in a newspaper, and it comes up when you search his name. Apparently he did nothing else of note (except this court case) so what else should be displayed? Nothing? What's the point of a search engine that doesn't give you factually correct and relevant results?
  - ZenPro 12y ago
    A positive result does signify the absence of negative results. You are displaying conformation bias. Put in legal terms; it is better for 10 guilty men to go free than 1 innocent man be incarcerated. You are fixated on Gonzalez and he is a footnote in the wider issue which you seem incapable of grasping. You wanted to find a search result that returns evidence of immoral or illegal behaviour. That does not exonerate Google from indexing the multitude of libellous, false and damaging materials that it has.

floppydisk 12y ago

> Should he be able to have that information removed from search engines who provide no context and social media accounts he owned? Absolutely. By the same logic one should also provide a means for people to protest indexes and tables of content in published literature. Opening a prominent business publication's table of contents and seeing a headline "CEO sued" provides no context and social media accounts he owned. However, we would argue freedom of the press and that since it is a print publication its simply recording a matter of public record. You've never been able to hide from your past, good or bad. If someone was motivated they could do the manual labor necessary to dig -- review publications, talk to relatives, visit past schools, talk to the local PD and such. Simply having Google erase its table of contents pointing to an article discussing past indiscretions doesn't make them go away or unrecoverable. What makes people uneasy is the relative ease at which Google et. al. make discovering past indiscretions, lawsuits, and other public information possible. The two questions that really need answering are should the past be easily searchable -- the information itself will never go away -- and how should that past information color the future?

ZenPro 12y ago
That is a fair point and well reasoned. I look at the issue less conspiratorially than some of the other posters. Whenever the law is changed, a party somewhere, is always quick to claim the political elite will benefit. In it's current guise I support the ability of people to have inaccurate information about their character removed from search rankings/indexing services. It boils down to the oft-thorny issue of what is reasonable? I do not think it is reasonable to have cases removed records. I do think it is reasonable to have published media that portrays an innocent party as guilty removed from publication. I don't know how that is accomplished but this legislation seems to be moving in broadly the right direction. I can see it being used to right more wrongs than vice versa but I am an optimist.