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Should We Have a Right To Be Forgotten Online?
rsmiller510 writes "There's a growing movement in Europe regarding a right to be forgotten online. It's a notion that might sound attractive on its face, but could have chilling unintended consequences for the historical record."
All I can say is, good fucking luck with that!
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Anonymous Coward says "yes"
Thanks
I just make sure that I am a very uninteresting person. You can also count on businesses going out of business and your data dying the obscurity death as well.
A right, by definition, does not require action on the part of another.
You have every right to remove what you've posted to your own servers - but once you post to someone else's server, you've relinquished control of that information, permanently.
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As nice this may or may not be for some people, I'm pretty sure that it's next-to-impossible to be "forgotten" online unless you never posted or shared any content anywhere (or never even went online). Data doesn't have a collective "off switch" that you can just flip to delete everything everywhere relating to a certain person. Computers don't work like that at all (and while it's technically possible, have fun forcing every other person in the world to comply with it).
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
In a way, the internet is a lot like real life. If you do or say something really stupid, chances are nobody will ever let you live it down anyway.
I'd rather have some other rights first, like a freedom of speech without having domains seized etc, and a right to actually have an internet connection (France is taking away your connection after allegedly downloading something, and so will the US - it seems)...
I want all of the things I've posted as Anonymous Coward for the past five years erased. All of these comments are "owned by the person who posted them," and I posted all of them.
A right, by definition, does not require action on the part of another.
That's only true for negative rights. And while I agree with you that positive "rights" are just a pleasant sounding cover for forcing people to act a certain way, a large swath of the population (especially in Europe) holds those rights as dearly as the traditional right to be left alone.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
A right, by definition, does not require action on the part of another.
You have every right to remove what you've posted to your own servers - but once you post to someone else's server, you've relinquished control of that information, permanently.
How about information gathered about you that you don't want out there and did not post? Like residences, incomes, vehicle registrations and other.
Home of The Suki Series
A right, by definition, does not require action on the part of another.
You have every right to remove what you've posted to your own servers - but once you post to someone else's server, you've relinquished control of that information, permanently.
This is exactly right, but let's not omit the corolary: If we want control over our information, we need to design systems where we're posting things to our own servers instead of someone else's.
Just like you can't make people forget all those things you said you'd wished you didn't, you can't do the same thing on the internet. You can try all you want and even make laws about it, but it won't work. Information is hard to control.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
Nuke everything from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it special.
What if someone out there knows your home address, and published it in a newpaper. Could you sue them or the paper for publishing it?
Take the emotionally charged Internet topic out, and lay it simply -- should you be able to forcibly censor someone from stating a fact? I don't.
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Both articles are all over the place. Are we talking about blog posts? Or, are we talking about scrubbing search engines? Yes, I should be able to delete a comment I make from any blog or forum (hello Slashdot?). Sometimes you say something incorrect, something you regret, or simply a comment you've changed your mind about. I've had quite a few errant posts on different blogs and a handful I've wanted to take back. It makes life much easier if I can blow away my wrong information and the gazillion people jumping up to correct you rather than wasting readers' time going over garbage.
Now, scrubbing the historical record? Good luck with that, Nixon!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
(Which is why I post under aliases.)
Dan? Dan Johnson? Is that you? How's it been, man?
Those are entitlements. I know some people use it as a dirty word, but its meaning is correct.
I would say that the closest existing principle that exists today is that information collected on individuals by Britain is subject to the 100 year rule - other countries may vary in the time they keep the information sealed. Such information is preserved but it is not available to do harm (in theory) within the probable lifetime of the individual.
I would argue that personal data held by corporations should be subject to a similar rule - it cannot be exposed to a broader audience inside a similar timeframe. In fact, I'd tighten up the rules a bit in places like the US so as to impose a European-style data privacy law (only one that actually works a bit better).
Blogs today are no different from editorials in newspapers a generation ago. The difference is in number. Indiscrete posts are not great but neither were indiscrete columns. As for the reaction, well, I put that down to society promoting the every-man-is-an-island view. If you can't cause consequences, not real ones, then why should you care what you say? Of course, we know that what you say and do does have an impact on others. There are always consequences for everything. The experiments proposed by various moral and ethical philosophies is how to optimize the result - maximizing the desirable consequences and minimizing the undesirable ones - though this assumes some agreement between people as to what is and is not desirable.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it special.
What if someone out there knows your home address, and published it in a newpaper. Could you sue them or the paper for publishing it?
Take the emotionally charged Internet topic out, and lay it simply -- should you be able to forcibly censor someone from stating a fact? I don't.
What about an unlisted phone number that was required for a property registration?
Home of The Suki Series
How about privileges, for a less dirty-sounding word? Rights granted by God, privileges granted by government.
I don't know about an unrestricted right to remove any information pertaining to yourself, but I do think we should have online protection over details that should be personal, like phone numbers and home addresses. I'll give you the following example to illustrate this point. Several years ago I created an LLC. When I created it the form I used said that I needed to use a real street address instead of a P.O. Box. I should have put down a mail drop but decided to use my home address, thinking that if someone looked up my record they'd see it but that nearly no one would look for my company because it was a small home-based business that didn't interact with customers. Big mistake. My business did not work out and I closed it.
I periodically search for my name on the search engines to see what turns up. Usually only what I expect to see related to my name is what I find, but a couple of weeks ago I decided to search for my name and city and to my dismay I found two sites listing my old company along with my name and home address, and one of the sites (corporationwiki.com) has received a number of complaints over failing to respond to people over privacy abuses, and the site's owners hide behind a private domain name registration. There's a similar problem with real estate sites that crawl real estate records and make them accessible through the search engines. Thus, when I purchase property in the future I'm going to obscure the record by buying it through an LLC that will not carry my name on the public record. I'm currently investigating my options for getting it removed.
Now some will contend that my personal address is a public record and that I should be entitled to privacy for it. I disagree. The state of California made license plate records private information only available to investigators after a stalker murdered a Hollywood start after tracking her down through her license plate information. I think home address information should be private across the board and that a person should have a right to have it deleted if it appears publicly online.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Nothing to see here.
Move along.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Not really, no. If you borrow something from me, my property right requires that you return it when I ask.
The problem here is that when you and I interact, we create a number of facts about that interaction. Untangling who owns what facts is a bit of a difficulty.
I don't get it.. why are these sheeple putting their real info all over the net? We hear it all the time, such and such gets fired because of facebook, or whatever..
Someone needs to teach people how to be an internet user me thinks!
Doesn't matter what they try to legislate, it's too late now. countless archives everywhere are full of your info.
How was the information obtained? Did you give it to them without stipulation? Public. Did they uncover it by breaking the law, or publish it with the explicit, demonstrable intent of harming the individual? That's another story.
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Privileges can work, but can be granted by non government entities. Entitlement is still more correct.
What's "historical record" worth if there are still people that say, despite all the evidence, that the earth is only 6000 years old :)
Privacy is terrorism.
If you do a WHOIS lookup on many personal .uk domains you'll see a name followed by "The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service."
This seems a good solution to me, and should apply to many other databases we once considered "public" (readable in person at the relevant library/government office) but don't necessarily want indexed on the web.
(IMO, the important difference is that paper databases might answer questions like "who owns 12 High Street, London?", but don't answer "what property does J Bloggs own?").
Among all the other bad things about such a proposal, there's the problem that it would require a mechanism as powerful as the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's _1984_ to pull it off.
Bollocks. I have the right to move down a public street (hence the phrase "right of way"). For me to exercise said right it may be necessary for someone to get their actual or metaphorical arse, unless they have a darn good excuse or they want to be prosecuted for obstruction.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
With the pace of change, isn't the question actually whether or not anything saved digitally is even going to be readable 100 years from now? If it isn't readable, then it is effectively forgotten for the most part anyway (yes, it isn't really gone but by then would the person affected care much?)
Is it better to say that what these individuals really want is immediate anonymity? In which case how is an online posting (as others have pointed out) any different than some of the silly things we've all done being known by those around us? Just on a much larger scale :)
Does that mean we can extend our second amendment rights to possession of a concealed <flashy thing>?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
If someone could figure out a technology that would allow me to forget things like "2 Girls 1 Cup" while allowing everything else to remain intact, I'd be eternally grateful.
In a way, the internet is a lot like real life. If you do or say something really stupid, chances are nobody will ever let you live it down anyway.
The internet allows you to be stupid and observed being so at the speed of light, around the world.
This ain't yer grandaddy's world.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The internet is the historical record now? My, don't we live in historical times!
Personally I do think that the needs of the living outweigh the needs of the yet-to-be-written historical record. I'm not about to give up privacy because some scholar later might want to write some dissertation on this or that boring little subject. What that is to mean for the current proposals remains to be seen, but do mind your priorities please.
I will always remember you. I will make a time capsule and put your data in. Even people of the future will see your posts. Make your time.
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
In general, I'd like to see one standard for corporate databases of private information, and another, weaker, standard for individuals publishing information. Where those activities intersect (me publishing my information on a corporate service), I'd like tighter regulation on how the corporation uses that information (e.g. don't datamine my "friends only" social network posts to see what brands I prefer and notify interested retailers.)
You're entitled to free speech but anything you say can and will be used against you on the internet. If you didn't want people to hear you speak, you should have written in a diary, not a blog.
Which defeats the purpose.....its a conundrum.... what came first, an actual person with no rights, or an hypothetical person's actual rights?
You see, the information will be forgotten via a new technology in which a secret agent will hold a pocket-sized device towards the computer whilst donning fashionable sunglasses. The device, when activated, will shoot out a laser SO POWERFUL that it will instantly erase all cookies, database records, text files, memory strings, hell even tape backups, pertaining to the desired user from existence. Pretty impressive stuff!
Once you reach a certain age, the things you do, the decisions you make, the things you say... they all matter. Of course, prior to the internet, all of that mattered a whole lot less. You could do something of colossal stupidity, have newspaper, radio, and TV coverage of the event, and even have people write books about you, and a couple years later, the public at large would barely remember. Now, get your name mentioned anywhere and it will always be one google search away. So, knowing this, behave in such a way that when people go searching for you, they don't find much of anything bad, because you never did anything to justify someone mentioning it. Likewise, when the opportunity to be a douche online presents itself, it might be responsible on your part, as a steward of future good will toward yourself, to fail to rise to that particular challenge. Don't blame the worms because you were stupid enough to open the can.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
There, fixed it for you.
In 1995, a distinction between the Internet and "real life" might have made sense. Today, it's everywhere. Something like 20% of all romantic relationships begin online. You can get online at **McDonald's**.
People need to realize that pretending to be someone else online is about as realistic as driving to a neighboring county and using a fake identity unless they're really good and dedicated.
"unknowing" information can never be a right. It goes counter to the entire flow of knowledge.
If you don't want to be known online, then don't put anything about yourself online. Period.
Asking for the global mind to "un-know" you is ridiculous and rather impossible.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Would be nice if we could do that here in the USA with data the government demands, does not protect and exempts itself from any wrongdoing.
Home of The Suki Series
30 years ago, people loved to be in the phone book. What is that if not a public record of residences and phone numbers? vehicle registrations (i believe) are also a public record. Many people even love to boast about how much money they make.
I know there are reasons why we want privacy, aggressive advertising, paranoia about governments, psycho killers, etc. I wonder though if humans are inherently all that private. It seems like society didn't value privacy much until very very recently. It seems like a majority of humans have this desire to be a celebrity. I know this crowd doesn't contain a lot of people who want to win american idol or get on jersey shore, but be honest. Isn't there some yearn to publish a proof or something that calls some attention to yourself? It's a weird dichotomy that we want to be as private and famous as possible.
I have a right for you to stop your car when you have put it in danger of running me over.
I have a right for you to move out of the way if you are blocking access to a voting booth.
I have a right for you to get off of my property if I haven't given you permission to be there.
I wouldn't be so sure of that definition. Reality doesn't generally conform to absolutes.
I run a large (4M+ post, 20k+ member) forum and inevitably receive requests from members every so often asking if their username, including all of their posts, can be deleted. To date my answer has been a resounding "no", with the primary reason being that removing one voice from a thread often results in a garbled mess that compromises the integrity of the archive. Much of the content is technical, so removing every third post because someone changed their mind can make the entire conversation worthless.
IMO once you've participated in a conversation in a public forum - electronic or otherwise - the decision to redact it is no longer yours alone to make.
If you don't want it in the public-knowledge domain, don't publish it. Period.
I had the luxury of making those stupid newbie posts on the Plato system starting in 1979. (Though, there are some archives somewhere, I think.)
Now, I just have to worry about all the stupid posts I made on Usenet when I should have known better.
And even worse, all the pointless flamewars I got into here on Slashdot.
What if someone out there knows your home address, and published it in a newspaper. Could you sue them or the paper for publishing it?
What if someone saw you leaving the office of an attorney who is well known for defending people accused of pedophilia? Can they set up a site named pedophile_lwsimon.org and publish all the time you spend at that attorney there?
No, being on the internet doesn't make it special, but it makes it googleable. It's like everything you say becomes instantly available to anyone. Not just like anyone who sees you at random on the street, but anyone who might have some special interest about you. like someone who holds a grudge against you, who is an adversary party at a lawsuit.
Except God really doesn't create or enforce rights - that would be left to society and governments. The concepts of negitive v positive rights is one which will keep people spilling ink for generations to come. Even negitive rights require someone or something to enforce the right, as keeping someone from infringing on your negitive rights can require intervention.
While you present a valid case for what you deem to be a right, it kind of flies in the face of established practice. Here is one example of a right which requires active participation of others:
Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit."
Privileges can be revoked. They are not something you deserve, they are something granted to you that can be taken away essentially arbitrarily.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
No. You don't need a government to enforce your rights. As long as you exist, you can express them.You might get punished or killed for it, but you can always express that right.
Entitlements? not so. It is something that you do not naturally have, but is given to use.
And if they had called it the entitlement to instruction instead, it would have been more correct.
You'll be forgotten. And not just "on-line".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
As there are no gods, the idea that rights are granted by one is obviously complete nonsense. Rights are granted by law, which is an action of a government.
Do you have the right to be forgotten by people you meet and interact with? No, you don't have any right to edit their memories or control what they write about you, aside from slander and libel restrictions. And even then I'd argue you don't have a right to prevent them from saying or publishing anything they please, only a right to collect damages from it.
So why should you have a right to be forgotten by our prosthetic memories, aka computers? If you cannot control what is written about you in newspapers, private correspondence or stone tablets then why believe you have a right to control what is written about you in magnetic fields and optical patterns?
Any argument that applies to paper applies to the computers and ultimately it applies back to human memory which you don't have a right to control.
Sure there is a matter of scale. A computer system can use and report its memories about you, doing in seconds what would take people years of research to do using written records. But it isn't a difference in type. Even without computers a historical researcher or private investigator could still dig up everything you'd ever written and everything written about you, get reports of everything you'd ever told your neighbors and find copies of every photograph taken of you in high school.
"A right, by definition, does not require action on the part of another."
I assume you're talking about moral rights. I assume you're not talking about legal rights, as those are dependent on the legal system involved, and so could require anything on the part of anyone, depending on how they are defined in legislation. In my country the proper authorities have the legal right to require me to join the military in certain circumstances, and that is plain fact, so you can't be talking about legal rights. You must be talking about moral rights -- which speak to what is morally permissible.
So if someone abducts your child, hides and locks her away, tells me (who nonetheless never wanted this and did everything in his power to avoid this) where she is, and then he kills himself, and you have proof of all of this, then neither you nor anyone else has the right to require me to tell you where she is, as a right does not require an action on the part of another, by definition? You would not be requiring me to refrain from an action, as I am taking no action otherwise, but actually requiring me to tell you, which involves an action of telling, not a refraining.
Or if some mad man has rigged thermonuclear devices which will, with provable certainty, kill every living thing on Earth only unless I in particular, completely unwilling, paint him a picture, then neither you nor anyone else has the right to require me to paint him a picture? You would not be requiring me to refrain from an action, as I am taking no action otherwise, but actually requiring me to paint a picture, which involves an action of painting, not a refraining.
To be honest, constructing examples to test your intuitions seems silly to me anyway, because I have a feeling you just made that up, and really the claim is not based on the definition of a "right", which you don't have, but merely your opinion.
Citation needed.
Not really, no. They have no obligation to take action to return the property, unless they agreed to that beforehand in a contract. However, they are obligated not to interfere with your action to take back your own property. Withholding the property from its rightful owner would be an act of theft.
In any event, communicating information is in no way similar to a loan of property. Once you've transmitted information to someone else they "own" it just as much as you do—it becomes a part of them. At that point you have no rightful control over how they use or further distribute it.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Rights exist by virtue of your existence. It doesn't matter if you believe sky zombie Jesus made you from silly putty or you that are the result of some monkeys gettin it on.
Rights are not GRANTED nor DENIED by law. Their expression can only be protected or restricted by law.
To echo what you say, regarding the phone book, the change in attitude came when cold-calling telesales became a problem. Before that I and most other people were happy for friends and other local people who had business with us to be able to look us up. The desire for anonymity of telephone number came for most people only when businesses started abusing the information.
If we had governments that were truly there to serve the people, cold-caling telesales would be completely illegal. But we don't. Governement is there to serve the interests of business. With the efforts of the few honest, people serving politicians always being undermined by those that are paid by the rich businessmen.
Yes....says the anonymous poster.
The concept of a "declaration of human rights" containing the words "shall be compulsory" is just laughable. It's a lot like Iran being on the UN Human Rights committee.
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This is how Objectivist philosophy arrives at the concept of individual rights - the identity property. A = A. You exist, therefore your existence is correct.
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No, everybody does not want to be famous.
Some time around 2008, Ghadafi would have really liked to exercise his right to be forgotten. I don't have to violate Godwin's Law to explain why there are some people who society should not permit to exercise a right to forgot.
And they're not always self-evident at the time. Considering that Beyonce or whomever was doing private concerts for Ghadafi at the time, he probably seemed like a okay guy with bad fashion sense and an image problem.
If defamation and libel law can't help you, your desire to be forgotten is not as important as society's need to avoid repeating mistakes.
You've got lots of replies in this thread, just thought I'd say "well done" to them in one post.
And you're right, "entitlement" is a better adjective for what the original poster was talking about, not "right".
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
You are really bordering on the defination of what is a right. Also, your defination is dependent on the actor, and is still rather week without enforcement. Right to free speech? Sure, you'll just get imprisoned or shot... not so much of a right without enforcement. Right to religion? Sure, as long as you don't pick the wrong one and get killed for it Right to autonomy? Sure thing as long as you are okay with dying if you don't like being someones slave. I also hope you don't throw in things like property rights in your negitive mix like some Libertarians do - those are not negitive rights, as they still require enforcement. I'm sorry, this is not a primitive society, we have more than just these basic interactions, one which require both positive and negitive right reinforcement.
I actually have a quite firm basis for my post, and you are correct in the distinction between legal and moral rights.
In both of your examples, you are correct - it is immoral to compel the individual. Both of these cases represent a value proposition that the actor must accept of his own free will. In practice, I seriously doubt that anyone would not disclose the location of a child - it is not in the interests of the person to keep that information to themselves. What do they stand to gain?
In your second example, you are basing the proposed actions of the painter on the word of a madman who has rigged the world to explode. The rigging is immoral, obviously, and no one except the painter can decide to paint the picture. To force the painter to paint would be and immoral act in and of itself - ever hear "two wrongs don't make a right"?
While, yes, if you assume that the madman is a stellar example of someone who keeps their word, forcing the painter may result in a "better" outcome - but the ends do not justify the means. Finally, in practice, if you force individuals to provide value to someone who is extorting them, all you have done is shown that extortion is an effective means of getting what you want.
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Rights exist by virtue of your existence.
I'm afraid that's not true. A rock exists but doesn't have any rights. A bacteria exists and has life, but doesn't have any rights. Same for a spider or a snake. Rights only start to exist when humans on mass decide to have sympathy. Cattle have the right to not suffer abuse, but not the right to life. Pets start to have a right to life too. And then a full range of rights only exists for mankind.
Again, rights only exist because a substantial number of people agree that they should exist, and the mechanism by which that happens is law enacted by a (usually democratically elected) government. In dictatorships, there usually aren't so many rights.
Rights are not down to existence any more then they are down to imaginary gods. They are a function of government, and vary from government jurisdiction to government jurisdiction.
I don't think you're getting it. You give all your data to Facebook, you say "only show this to my friends" but Facebook turns around and uses your data for evil, there is nothing you can do. You put all your data on your own server, you set it up to only allow your friends to access it, you're not trusting anybody other than your friends. Sure, your friends can copy it and repost it and whatever, but presumably you trust the friends you allow access to the sensitive stuff. Can you say the same thing about Facebook or Microsoft or Sony?
Your response is basically saying, "If you don't want it in the public-knowledge domain, don't tell your wife or your kids." That's not acceptable. You should be able to choose who you trust with the information without splattering it all over the world, and one of those trusted parties shouldn't have to be a corporation.
a less dirty sounding word?
The roots of the word privilege literally makes it mean "Private Law" as in those who are privileged live with different rules than the average public. It's already a pretty dirty concept to begin with really..
A right, by definition, does not require action on the part of another.
Quotation needed / Is it some sort of "common law" brilliant idea?
Does "claim right" sound familiar to you? Right to healthcare? Right to an attorney? These require action on the part of another.
Also right of property embraces requiring from others not to infringe your rights to your property/
but once you post to someone else's server, you've relinquished control of that information, permanently
In Europe thought are closer to the concept that the data concerning my person is owned by me, I can put it on your database but if you misconduct or I change my mind, I can revoke your rights to process it.
I guess you've noticed that data and privacy protection in USA is broken, serves mainly big corps, but why are you so mean to export your legal system ideas abroad?
At the same time those having a copy of your info cannot use it beyond what it was originally intended for.
Silly things like going bust and handing over the info to a third party can only happen under the original conditions.
That's why international companies with databases holding personal info doing business in Europe have to sign Safe Harbor contracts.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Can I get a law giving me the right to be remembered online? Forever? How about a law that requires everyone to notice me online? That could be handy.
That is all.
The problem with the word entitlement is it has been changed from a context-dependent neutral value word to being a negative-connotation value word regardless of context. Which rather sucks when trying to be precise about things without biasing the reader or listeners opinion due to word choice.
God damn it, society!
Ice Cream has no bones.
They have no obligation to take action to return the property, unless they agreed to that beforehand in a contract.
Borrowing the item in the first place creates the return requirement implicitly. The lender is not obliged to try to find it and bring it back, that's on the borrower. If you don't believe that, try borrowing someone's car and moving to the next state.
In any event, communicating information is in no way similar to a loan of property. Once you've transmitted information to someone else they "own" it just as much as you do—it becomes a part of them. At that point you have no rightful control over how they use or further distribute it.
Sounds about right to me. Who's going to inform the RIAA?
More seriously, I agree that the right to be forgotten won't work because it intrinsically conflicts with other's equal rights to control their personal information. There is no definable nose/fist intersect point we can use there. My only objection was the claim that a right cannot create an obligation in others by definition.
and published it in a newpaper. Could you sue them or the paper for publishing it?
In my country - yes, you could.
And people have right to their name until they are forecefully convicted, so until they are convicted - newspapers have to name the president e.g. Barack O., not Barack Obama.
Seems that ex-communist legislation protects people better than land of free.
Borrowing the item in the first place creates the return requirement implicitly. The lender is not obliged to try to find it and bring it back, that's on the borrower.
That depends entirely on the contract. You obviously can't borrow something without the owner's permission, so there must be a contract in place granting you that permission; if, in that contract, the other party neglected to specify that you have to take action to return the property (or else forfeit your own alienable property in the form of penalties), that's their problem. In the absence of any specific contractual obligation to return the property it is up to the owner to recover it, and the borrower's only obligation is to let them do so.
Of course, normally a rental contract does specify penalties in the event the property is not actively returned, but there is no "implicit" obligation if that term is omitted.
Who's going to inform the RIAA?
What makes you think they would care? If they were interested in respecting property rights they wouldn't be in that business in the first place. Natural rights and copyrights privileges are fundamentally incompatible.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Sorry but if you don't want to be remembered online then don't post anything. If we make it acceptable to be forgotten then surely that applies to companies too and they can remove anything whenever they feel like it and that would be awful. As well the idea that you can get in trouble for saving something made publicly available is worse than some d-bag having to live with his d-bag comments made online.
I do think if you have an account on something like Facebook that when you close it that data should go away. It's part of a service you're not using. But if someone saved that data then tough shit.
I agree. But if you use phrases like "self evident" and "imbued by their creator" then you can rewrite the laws of physics and the universe must obey.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Same with a cave man. Does he have the right to be free from ursine nutritional procurement?
I'm with Hobbes on this one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Didn't OldManMurray.com just have this very problem with concerns to Wikipedia? Being a thing from the past + reference links falling off the Internet = you must have never happened and are thus not notable.
Ask Herostratus...
If you make a retarded comment, let it stick with you -- people should be more wary of what they type if they are so concerned about privacy issues. If you say really stupid stuff all of the time, it should bite you in the ass. I bet people who think about what they write when they comment could care less about how many people see it, in-fact http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/14/1919238/Should-We-Have-a-Right-To-Be-Forgotten-Online?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29#the opposite - they probably wish more people saw it, and if it was meaningful, I wish I saw it too.
but could have chilling unintended consequences for the historical record.
Right.
Because our historical record is chock-full of information about what people had for breakfast, and that bitchin' party they went to, and what dress she wore...
No, I didn't read the fine article. I'm sure it's referring to some specific individual who did something that might actually be of some interest, and wants it stricken from the record because he's gotten in trouble for it. And those chilling consequences are probably some vague reference to somebody, for example, revising history to remove Hitler's anti-Semitism.
And I suppose there is some valid concern there... Our media is becoming increasingly ephemeral. We don't etch anything in stone, we just record it on some magnetic media or print it on paper. And then people forget about it. And a year later you'd have a hard time proving it happened.
But I think that's largely unrelated to being forgotten online.
Either individuals need to be able to be forgotten online... Or we as a society need to learn to deal with the fact that most people did some stupid stuff in college.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
If you are going to post something online then yes, you should consider that it is permanently available somewhere on the internet.
If you are one of the "Internet Brave" then I expect this will disturb you greatly.
If the statements you make online have the same thought and consideration as the things you say to people in person there is not likely to be much of a problem, now is there?
Ok, now that I am done with MY knee-jerk reaction- those in countries with dictatorships and censorship that does not allow differing viewpoints are a special case.
In those instances the anonymous posting of news and opinion pieces is vital to survival and improvement in those countries.
Linux computers, watercooled, photography
I personally believe that, "Yes, we should have the right, no the means, to be 'forgotten'/'vanish' from the World Wide Network".
That said, given the number of bots roaming around the internet collecting data, how possible is that? I can think of a few methods that one might employ, and some extensions to common protocols that might better facilitate, the removal of your "presence" from the internet. However, the sure volume of data, and number of times it is cached, or mirrored every day, the potential for open standards, and the ability to create one's own personal networks, offline media such as CDs, USB Keys, Hard Drives, Floppies (Yes Some Still Use Them), Tapes, etc. Make the removal of data from this vast expanse of bits virtually impossibe
To the historical question, what of historical importance, is there about my self? True that I am a male person, who lived in the united states between the year I was born and now. That data is available through public records, and I have been counted in the census. Data that is truly important, will find it's way into a book or file somewhere (the electronic kind or otherwise). That coupled with the copious misrepresented and erroneous data on the World Wide Network, makes the larger percentage of the datum fairly ambiguous and of little use. The are obvious, concerted, efforts to maintain repositories of useful , accurate, data, historical or otherwise. However, the open and diverse nature of the users of said network make those efforts difficult.
Just my two cents.
http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
Many worries are "you will never get a job with previous posts on the internet around". How about we just abolish work instead, like Bob Black suggested? Or have a "basic income"? We can use high tech in other ways to address this problem than destroy our history, given robots and AIs can so more and more of the "work" these days anyway -- made possible by the same sorts of technology that makes privacy such an issue.
That said, making our networks function more like human brains as far as forgetting is an interesting idea.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
What is wrong with that. If Bill Gates wants to pay for your health care or help you with housing what's wrong with that*???
*Same thing that is wrong with letting the government do it. People become dependent on a service which may not exist in the future and don't plan for it's disappearance. So it becomes worse to get rid of bad program then to continue on with it. At least for an election cycle time period.
Wait, If im standing on the sidewalk and you come lumbering down, you have the right to force me to stop standing there? Im confused.
Does one have a right to "be forgotten" off-line?
Can one go to a newspaper and demand that a letter to the editor one wrote be removed from all copies it was printed in?
Can one demand that every book one has written be destroyed?
Can one go to every person one knows and every institution one has done business with and demand every letter one has written to same be destroyed?
No, one can not. And, that is the answer to the question: No, one should not have a "right to be forgotten" online.
If you want a right, and that right requires action on the part of someone else...then it's not a right. The right to free speech does not require anyone to listen, the right to free presses does not require them to print what you want, and since the right to be forgotten could really only involve requiring others to not write about you on-line, it simply is not a right.
History cant be destroy.
Well, since we in Europe were the ones who got about this "rights" thing long before you in the USA were indeed in the USA, I'd say we do have that right. Also, "negative" and "positive" rights is just your anglo-lingo. No one else really cares. If enough people agree or enough politicans are bribed, anything can be made a right. For instance, niggers in the front of bus. No action on the part of another? What about racists? They have to suffer the damn mellon-eaters in the front. So, please, drop the "by definition", higher-than-thou crap.
But God doesn't exist. Therefore there are no rights, only privileges.
Already we can't review really old slashdot articles. The search implementation is shoddy and ineffective and we can't continue to post on closed discussions. It makes sense to stop allowing people to moderate older discussions but not allowing them to comment is horrible. I know this touches upon some of the advantages of being a paid member but it really sucks that the gathering point for nerds on the internet is organized for advertisers not it's users.
What we need is for the human race to wake up and understand that we all do stupid stuff at some point. Being drunk and having your picture taken wearing womens underwear/naked/passed out in front of a bong/canoodling with a stripper (of the same sex !) etc. etc. etc. does not make you the equivalent of Hitler (unless of course you are Hitler) It does not demonstrate your ability to perform a particular task efficiently.
The sum total of your life and being cannot be summarised by one image frozen in time. You are a conscious entity that feels it's way through life, makes it up as you go along and often gets it worng. That's the fun of being alive !
Anyone who hasn't done something daft or embarassing at some point in their life is probably a socially inadequate loser who daren't lose their self control because that's when they're start killing people.
Simply put it should be illegal for companies to discrimante against someone for something "offensive" or "tasteless" they were pictured doing years ago which has now surfaced "online" (probably from something taken when they were a drunken teenager)
The "moral minority" are puritanical, small minded prudes who can't get a hard on between 'em (that's why the world needs shrinks and Viagra). Quite how society decided theirs was the voice that should be listened to is beyond me.
Weirdfolk arise ! Stand erect for your abnormality because you're better than them !
We should, nay have, a right to be ourselves with all our faults , all our weaknesses and all our strengths. That's what makes the show work !
Personally I only hire "weirdos" as I find they're usually more independent, more creative, and do a better job than the "straights". When a problem arises they creatively solve it (or work round it) whilst the "normals" just sit on their hands waiting to be told what to do.
Praise "Bob" ! And fuck' em if they can't take a joke.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
I tried naming myself Maud, but TDTTOE.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
Stay a while, stay FOREVER
A couple times over the years I (or a close relative) have been contacted by someone researching the family name, trying to piece together a family history. It's fascinating to speculate how 100 years from now how a genealogist will go about that process.
Proposal:
Slashdot Word Thingy Referendum
Which word should supplant "entitle" to mean what entitle used to mean in it's original context-dependent neutral value existence etc...
What say ye?
So they pass a law, the right to be forgotten online. Ok, so say i've got a poor credit score because of bankruptcy or not paying bills. Well, how about I go to the credit companies and demand they "forget" me. Oh, well then we take away that right for commercial purposes. Er, what if i have adds on my website? Wouldn't that make the pictures I took of you drunk with that girl be commercial then? It would certainly involve me "entertaining" the public for recompense. And this doesn't even get into multiple countries, with different laws. I don't want to forgo international holidays because I might be sued for "damages", or imprisoned for ignoring local laws for something I did at home.
Wow, someone both spelt and used the word "bollocks" correctly on Slashdot. You sir are clearly British :D
I have a right to remember and publish what I know.
Those would be examples of the right to privacy being violated by, or voluntarily given up to, the government. The difference being they would not have become public information if you hadn't been forced to publish them in order to own a home, earn a living, etc. Original point stands.
What if someone else produces and publishes something about me? Say a photo taken at a party or a blog post revealing some aspect of my life I'd rather remained a secret (like a medical condition that could affect my chances of getting a job and which by law employers are not allowed to ask about).
It used to be that only journalists and book publishers could get information out to a large number of people, and even then an article in a paper archived on microfilm somewhere is not exactly easy to find. Now you type someone's name into Google and you can read everything anyone ever wrote about them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
On a fb perspective its like publishing. Don't post/ put out anything u wouldn't want published. If you drunk fb post or drunk text, u can't take it back with communications power comes communications responsibility. No such thing as a right to be forgotten, its a privilege.
Its like they say ... shag one sheep....
Every right can be revoked. Except maybe freedom of thought, for now. And who defines what you deserve?
Dilbert RSS feed
So where do those rights come from?
Dilbert RSS feed
On the other hand, it's all too easy to damage somebody's reputation by posting false information; and unless that person is noteworthy enough for somebody else to uncover the truth, it's impossible to make that kind of misinformation go away. (Not to mention how it can be done more-or-less anonymously with no thought for consequences.)
I don't see an easy answer to this one. If we somehow found a way to purge information, you can bet it would be abused by those who *did* have something to hide.
Historical record? As if every single person was remembered in detail before the internet was invented.
And besides that: If I choose not to be recorded in history -by erasing my footprints- that's my choice to make. Just like all the ones I made before that have also altered history.
If you want a shrine, build a pyramid.
I only see a technical problem here, not a moral or ethical one.
I very often rant and rave about things, this one I would love to be able to have, because I am sure that 5 years after someone has posted so many stupid blogs about themselves on facebook that shows their lack of maturity when they were younger, they would love to be able to press a reset button as now they are looking for that decent job, and everyone seems able to look up quickly that person on the internet and see they hang out in these after hours till wee hours of the morning, does not sound like this would make a good sales rep that needs to be always prepared with his materials for the 8 oclock board room meeting....
Now, actually being able to do this is another story, I have seen services online you can buy that says they can do this, erase all posts and blogs etc, etc....but with google's unrelenting archiving of everything wonderful and internet ....you might have a serious problem, because as you may have been able to say remove the original website's page with that picture of you bent over forward showing your *ss as if for someone to kiss.....you will see that google in some cases actually has archives that date back to 1997 of websites that have been taken down and are no longer in existance...yet remain as a linkable place on the internet for those of us that know how to leverage the power of google...
That's a popular right-wing shibboleth, but it's incorrect. You have the right to a trial by jury, the right to legal consul, and the right to compel witnesses to appear on your behalf, all of which fundamentally imply action on the part of others.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Here we see the root of your problem: you believe that human nature is other than it is. Human beings do not always act out of rational self-interest.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
What happens if you manage to sign on as root@universe.org, then do "rm -r -f *". The question is, do you delete god in the process.
I might be wrong about this but, if I remember correctly, a company was liquidating its assets in a bankruptcy and tried to sell its customer data. The court didn't let that sale go through. It might have been related to a privacy pledge by the company not to sell the data to but maybe the sale was rejected on general grounds.
I do not. I believe, based upon my own observations and those of others, than humans will act in their own perceived best interests. That's not the same statement.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Does this mean I get to go to the library and burn the newspapers that have photos or articles about me, or that I've written letters to the editor?
Our society is built on the premise that we can keep parts of our lives separate from one another. That time you were drunk and stole a traffic cone was pretty much impossible for a potential employer to find out about. Now some asshat can post it for all the world to see and Google helps the world find it.
I actually think Google could be the solution to this problem. They need to come up with a way of preventing people from searching for random individuals, basically non-famous people. Or rather allow individuals control over what information Google lets others find about them. How that would work in practice with thousands of global search engines available I'm not sure.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
We're in a transitional period here, where we have all of this information out there but we haven't learned what to do with it. Everyone says stupid things they regret, everyone gets photographed in embarrassing poses, everyone is lied about at one point or another. Eventually, we're going to learn to accept this and not holding it against people, learn to cut people some slack and treat what we read online about someone with skepticism. Otherwise, we'll reach a point where NO ONE will be able to get a job, or run for office, or do anything that "requires" a squeaky-clean individual, because said individual doesn't exist.
The "inalienable Rights" endowed by God in the Declaration are the closest thing to positive rights we have in this society: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.