Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
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!
Those are entitlements. I know some people use it as a dirty word, but its meaning is correct.
IDK, The British are pretty good at it. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-10/u-k-lawmaker-says-rbs-s-goodwin-obtained-super-injunction-.html
...And, with that single link, you've not only gotten around the intent of this unicorn-farts-and-pixie-dust "superinjunction", but made an entirely new and previously uninterested group of people (consisting of at least me) aware of his status as an evil banker.
So, while the British might grasp the idea of wielding the law as a maul, they still don't grasp the full power of the Streisand effect.
How about privileges, for a less dirty-sounding word? Rights granted by God, privileges granted by government.
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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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?").
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."
If you don't want it in the public-knowledge domain, don't publish it. Period.
Negative - you're simply inverting the questions. Rights may very well include restraints on the actions of others - they don't *require* that others act.
Restated:
You may not drive your car in a manner that puts others in immediate danger.
You may not use physical force to control the actions of others.
You may not trespass on the property of others.
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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.
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.
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.