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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."
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.
Learn about Photography Basics.
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.
Exactly
1. Stop using your real name, use aliases or post as AC.
2. Use different aliases for each site.
3. Use disposable email addresses for temporary logins
4. Use anonkeys1 (etc) logins
5. Use TOR for sites/comments you want truly anonymous. Also use TOR to access the email address you register with (if you EVER access that address from your own IP, you've compromised the account... throw it out)
L2Protect your own rights if you care about them so much.
AccountKiller
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.