6 ms·

The 'right to be forgotten' is impossible to enforce. We just need to be more forgiving.

pavanky 12y ago
The right to be forgotten lies in a gray zone. Who is going to be the judge of what needs to be forgotten and what can stay public ?
- opendais 12y ago
  Anything that might make someone unemployable that didn't result in a conviction or other defeat in court.
  - chc 12y ago
    I should have a right to make people forget that I have a bad attitude, never shower and am prone to cursing anyone in my vicinity?
    - opendais 12y ago
      The topic is arrests. The fact you never shower is not going to get you arrested.
      - chc 12y ago
        You didn't actually limit what you said to that topic. You said there should be a "right to be forgotten," and when someone wondered what it should apply to, answered "Anything that might make someone unemployable that didn't result in a conviction or other defeat in court" (emphasis mine). The fact that someone never showers falls under that heading. At no point have you said anything to suggest you were only talking about arrests, and the EU law does not limit itself that way. Did you instead mean for it to apply only to arrests and nothing else?
        opendais 12y ago
        > Ya, stuff like that is why we need a right to be forgotten in the US. People tend to see an arrest and leap to conclusions. I say this as a person who has never been arrested. :/ > Anything that might make someone unemployable that didn't result in a conviction or other defeat in court. > The topic is arrests. The fact you never shower is not going to get you arrested. I guess to me the pattern was obvious but I accept it wasn't obvious to you. Yes, the topic is related to arrests & court cases.
        chc 12y ago
        OK, just so I'm clear, which is it: Is the topic limited to arrests and court cases or is it just related to arrests and court cases? You seem to object to my comment on the former grounds ("the topic is arrests"), but you have not been restricting your statements to those topics. I find this a bit frustrating, because you keep making broad statements, but object to commentary that is equally broad.
        opendais 12y ago
        I reject your comment on the fact its groundless and in no way related to arrests being published by the media. I'm not sure how I can be any clearer. If it isn't directly related to arrests by a single degree, it isn't on topic imo.
    - silverbax88 12y ago
      Yes, because you did those things as a baby. We all did.
- silverbax88 12y ago
  I don't see it as a gray zone at all. There is a public record for a reason, as well as libel/slander laws in the U.S. The search engines and the Internet just think those don't matter. They are wrong, and the courts will continue to tweak the verbiage and hand down rulings until they adhere to them. - If a local paper published the home address of a woman who was a private citizen in their paper, every single day, and her crazy ex-husband used that information to locate her and kill her, the newspaper would be liable. But the Internet does that all of the time and claims that it's free speech. - If a person is convicted of a crime, does 10 years in prison, and serves their debt to society, that's still public record. An employer can find it even without doing a Google search, although that's what people are claiming is a 'grey area'. Is it 'fair' that the person's name immediately turns up their arrest record as the #1 result? Well, 'fair' and having done 10 years in prison don't really add up. Here's the thing - in the U.S., people are up in arms over the 'right to be forgotten' and claiming it violates free speech. But that's not really true. Today, if there is inaccurate information about you - like, say, Google links to a website that says you were busted smoking crack in a nearby schoolyard, but it is completely untrue - you can go after the offending site and they will have to remove it under U.S. laws, and that means Google's links will evaporate. But this isn't the case in the E.U., where this law was passed.
  - mynewwork 12y ago
    Do you have any sort of citation or reference to back up your claim that a newspaper would be liable for a murder due to printing an address in the US? Wouldn't everyone be liable for everything if "someone used a fact you published to commit a crime" was the standard? In the US, libel and slander laws can't be used to prevent people from saying things which they can prove to be true or factual.
    - _delirium 12y ago
      The most famous case is probably Neal Horsley, who was found liable (though only civilly) for publishing the home addresses of abortion doctors, some of whom were later harmed. He was sued for contributing to the attacks and lost. These were correct addresses and it was true that they were abortion doctors, but a court nonetheless considered their publication to constitute an implied threat of harm to the doctors in question. There are some less dramatic cases involving the "public disclosure of private facts" tort, against which truth is not a defense (though an address would not usually be considered a private fact). In the traditional (pre-automation) era intent played a large role. This worked out okay in most cases, because harmful things (like Horsley's site) tended to only show up as a result of malevolent intent. Sites with lists of abortion doctors' home addresses didn't just show up innocently, so if nobody had malevolent intent, they wouldn't show up. Now if algorithms are just throwing up lots of things, there is probably not malevolent intent on the part of the algorithms, but the same harms can result. So different legal systems are trying to figure out what to do about it.
opendais 12y ago
It is possible to get local papers kicked out of Google search results for things like arrests that did not lead to a conviction [which honestly is a 90% solution]. 90% solutions are good enough.
- chc 12y ago
  That also sounds 90% good enough to make the media useless. A politician doesn't like an article about his corrupt behavior? Well, he wasn't convicted for anything in the article, so away it goes!
  - opendais 12y ago
    So, being acquitted is meaningless to you and should negatively impact future employment. Noted.
    - Crito 12y ago
      Forget acquitted, what if charges are never brought in the first place? Should the Nixons of this world have a right to be forgotten?
      - _delirium 12y ago
        If we're talking about the EU version of the right, it explicitly excludes public figures.
      - opendais 12y ago
        For the majority of people? Yes. If you aren't able to get the person in a court of law and win, you shouldn't be able to prejudice their ability to make a living. EU excludes public figures [I'm not sure exactly how its written]. It isn't like people are magically going to forget nationwide media coverage of someone like Nixon and his "I am not a crook speech". We still remember it decades later. I think I'd rather err on the side of protecting the poor and weakest members of society that probably can't get someone to take a libel case on their behalf for $$ than punish every guilty person "who got away with it". For every Nixon, there are dozens if not hundreds of people with arrest records published on the internet that never went to trial.
jerf 12y ago
The "right to be forgotten" is just a societal mechanism for enforcing forgiveness, since we lack any other way to enforce or even particularly suggest forgiveness as a society [1]. Humans are not wired for the proper amounts of forgiveness in a digital world. (One can debate how correctly wired they are under other circumstances, but I feel pretty confident that our thresholds aren't even close to right for a digital world where nothing ever decays naturally and everything is right at your fingertips.) [1]: Before correcting that, do think about whether it is an option to society, and I am specifically referring to the US. Various religions do some work here, but we do not as a society wish to use that mechanism.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  I think the problem is ultimately self-correcting as judgmental people start losing out on opportunities. When Facebook first came out, most of the older generation put out dire warnings about losing jobs because of that drunken party pic you put up. That happens, but now if you start disqualifying every candidate who ever put something embarrassing up on the Internet, you won't have a very large applicant pool. Cue "talent shortage" and "hiring is hard!" blog posts. Meanwhile, the person who got drunk and dirty 5 years ago is now a very talented digital marketer and has gotten a job with your competitor. Historically, we've seen more tolerant and open societies win out economically over more closed and judgmental ones. Countries that allow women into the workforce do a lot better than ones where work is a man's province, because they have twice as many potential workers. Countries that place people into jobs based on talents and interests do better than those that have rigid caste systems or exams, because they can adapt more flexibly to changing skill requirements. The mechanism is just like the one above: if you deny someone a job for an arbitrary, irrelevant reason, he'll just go find someone less arbitrary (or arbitrary in different ways) and work for her.
  - opendais 12y ago
    In the long run, the problem is self correcting. However, if someone finds themselves unable to get a job in their local area [e.g. Small Town USA where you might only have 1 employer of a given type in some cases] and is forced to move to find a more tolerant employer...that is a burden we shouldn't reasonably expect people to suffer due to a cautious police officer who wanted to play it safe and arrest someone.

The right to be forgotten lies in a gray zone. Who is going to be the judge of what needs to be forgotten and what can stay public ?

opendais 12y ago
Anything that might make someone unemployable that didn't result in a conviction or other defeat in court.
- chc 12y ago
  I should have a right to make people forget that I have a bad attitude, never shower and am prone to cursing anyone in my vicinity?
  - opendais 12y ago
    The topic is arrests. The fact you never shower is not going to get you arrested.
    - chc 12y ago
      You didn't actually limit what you said to that topic. You said there should be a "right to be forgotten," and when someone wondered what it should apply to, answered "Anything that might make someone unemployable that didn't result in a conviction or other defeat in court" (emphasis mine). The fact that someone never showers falls under that heading. At no point have you said anything to suggest you were only talking about arrests, and the EU law does not limit itself that way. Did you instead mean for it to apply only to arrests and nothing else?
      - opendais 12y ago
        > Ya, stuff like that is why we need a right to be forgotten in the US. People tend to see an arrest and leap to conclusions. I say this as a person who has never been arrested. :/ > Anything that might make someone unemployable that didn't result in a conviction or other defeat in court. > The topic is arrests. The fact you never shower is not going to get you arrested. I guess to me the pattern was obvious but I accept it wasn't obvious to you. Yes, the topic is related to arrests & court cases.
        chc 12y ago
        OK, just so I'm clear, which is it: Is the topic limited to arrests and court cases or is it just related to arrests and court cases? You seem to object to my comment on the former grounds ("the topic is arrests"), but you have not been restricting your statements to those topics. I find this a bit frustrating, because you keep making broad statements, but object to commentary that is equally broad.
        opendais 12y ago
        I reject your comment on the fact its groundless and in no way related to arrests being published by the media. I'm not sure how I can be any clearer. If it isn't directly related to arrests by a single degree, it isn't on topic imo.
  - silverbax88 12y ago
    Yes, because you did those things as a baby. We all did.
silverbax88 12y ago
I don't see it as a gray zone at all. There is a public record for a reason, as well as libel/slander laws in the U.S. The search engines and the Internet just think those don't matter. They are wrong, and the courts will continue to tweak the verbiage and hand down rulings until they adhere to them. - If a local paper published the home address of a woman who was a private citizen in their paper, every single day, and her crazy ex-husband used that information to locate her and kill her, the newspaper would be liable. But the Internet does that all of the time and claims that it's free speech. - If a person is convicted of a crime, does 10 years in prison, and serves their debt to society, that's still public record. An employer can find it even without doing a Google search, although that's what people are claiming is a 'grey area'. Is it 'fair' that the person's name immediately turns up their arrest record as the #1 result? Well, 'fair' and having done 10 years in prison don't really add up. Here's the thing - in the U.S., people are up in arms over the 'right to be forgotten' and claiming it violates free speech. But that's not really true. Today, if there is inaccurate information about you - like, say, Google links to a website that says you were busted smoking crack in a nearby schoolyard, but it is completely untrue - you can go after the offending site and they will have to remove it under U.S. laws, and that means Google's links will evaporate. But this isn't the case in the E.U., where this law was passed.
- mynewwork 12y ago
  Do you have any sort of citation or reference to back up your claim that a newspaper would be liable for a murder due to printing an address in the US? Wouldn't everyone be liable for everything if "someone used a fact you published to commit a crime" was the standard? In the US, libel and slander laws can't be used to prevent people from saying things which they can prove to be true or factual.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    The most famous case is probably Neal Horsley, who was found liable (though only civilly) for publishing the home addresses of abortion doctors, some of whom were later harmed. He was sued for contributing to the attacks and lost. These were correct addresses and it was true that they were abortion doctors, but a court nonetheless considered their publication to constitute an implied threat of harm to the doctors in question. There are some less dramatic cases involving the "public disclosure of private facts" tort, against which truth is not a defense (though an address would not usually be considered a private fact). In the traditional (pre-automation) era intent played a large role. This worked out okay in most cases, because harmful things (like Horsley's site) tended to only show up as a result of malevolent intent. Sites with lists of abortion doctors' home addresses didn't just show up innocently, so if nobody had malevolent intent, they wouldn't show up. Now if algorithms are just throwing up lots of things, there is probably not malevolent intent on the part of the algorithms, but the same harms can result. So different legal systems are trying to figure out what to do about it.

opendais 12y ago

It is possible to get local papers kicked out of Google search results for things like arrests that did not lead to a conviction [which honestly is a 90% solution]. 90% solutions are good enough.

chc 12y ago
That also sounds 90% good enough to make the media useless. A politician doesn't like an article about his corrupt behavior? Well, he wasn't convicted for anything in the article, so away it goes!
- opendais 12y ago
  So, being acquitted is meaningless to you and should negatively impact future employment. Noted.
  - Crito 12y ago
    Forget acquitted, what if charges are never brought in the first place? Should the Nixons of this world have a right to be forgotten?
    - _delirium 12y ago
      If we're talking about the EU version of the right, it explicitly excludes public figures.
    - opendais 12y ago
      For the majority of people? Yes. If you aren't able to get the person in a court of law and win, you shouldn't be able to prejudice their ability to make a living. EU excludes public figures [I'm not sure exactly how its written]. It isn't like people are magically going to forget nationwide media coverage of someone like Nixon and his "I am not a crook speech". We still remember it decades later. I think I'd rather err on the side of protecting the poor and weakest members of society that probably can't get someone to take a libel case on their behalf for $$ than punish every guilty person "who got away with it". For every Nixon, there are dozens if not hundreds of people with arrest records published on the internet that never went to trial.

jerf 12y ago

The "right to be forgotten" is just a societal mechanism for enforcing forgiveness, since we lack any other way to enforce or even particularly suggest forgiveness as a society [1]. Humans are not wired for the proper amounts of forgiveness in a digital world. (One can debate how correctly wired they are under other circumstances, but I feel pretty confident that our thresholds aren't even close to right for a digital world where nothing ever decays naturally and everything is right at your fingertips.) [1]: Before correcting that, do think about whether it is an option to society, and I am specifically referring to the US. Various religions do some work here, but we do not as a society wish to use that mechanism.

nostrademons 12y ago
I think the problem is ultimately self-correcting as judgmental people start losing out on opportunities. When Facebook first came out, most of the older generation put out dire warnings about losing jobs because of that drunken party pic you put up. That happens, but now if you start disqualifying every candidate who ever put something embarrassing up on the Internet, you won't have a very large applicant pool. Cue "talent shortage" and "hiring is hard!" blog posts. Meanwhile, the person who got drunk and dirty 5 years ago is now a very talented digital marketer and has gotten a job with your competitor. Historically, we've seen more tolerant and open societies win out economically over more closed and judgmental ones. Countries that allow women into the workforce do a lot better than ones where work is a man's province, because they have twice as many potential workers. Countries that place people into jobs based on talents and interests do better than those that have rigid caste systems or exams, because they can adapt more flexibly to changing skill requirements. The mechanism is just like the one above: if you deny someone a job for an arbitrary, irrelevant reason, he'll just go find someone less arbitrary (or arbitrary in different ways) and work for her.
- opendais 12y ago
  In the long run, the problem is self correcting. However, if someone finds themselves unable to get a job in their local area [e.g. Small Town USA where you might only have 1 employer of a given type in some cases] and is forced to move to find a more tolerant employer...that is a burden we shouldn't reasonably expect people to suffer due to a cautious police officer who wanted to play it safe and arrest someone.