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Europe's 'Right To Be Forgotten' Threatens Online Free Speech
An anonymous reader writes "Jeffrey Rosen, Legal Affairs Editor for The New Republic, explains why the E.U.'s proposed data protection regulation known as the right to be forgotten is actually 'the biggest threat to free speech on the Internet in the coming decade.' In the Stanford Law Review Online (there's a shorter version in TNR), he writes: 'The right to be forgotten could make Facebook and Google, for example, liable for up to two percent of their global income if they fail to remove photos that people post about themselves and later regret, even if the photos have been widely distributed already. Unless the right is defined more precisely when it is promulgated over the next year or so, it could precipitate a dramatic clash between European and American conceptions of the proper balance between privacy and free speech, leading to a far less open Internet.' According to Rosen, the 'right' goes farther than previously thought, treating 'takedown requests for truthful information posted by others identically to takedown requests for photos I've posted myself that have then been copied by others: both are included in the definition of personal data as "any information relating" to me, regardless of its source.' Examples of previous attempts this might bolster include 'efforts by two Germans convicted of murdering a famous actor to remove their criminal history from the actor's Wikipedia page' and an 'Argentine pop star [who] had posed for racy pictures when she was young, but recently sued Google and Yahoo to take them down.'"
Wish I could forget about Natalie Portman, petrified, and covered in hot grits...
Sometimes the right to life threatens the right to free speech (when people want to shout "fire") sometimes the right to free speech threatens the right to free movement (when people set up web sites to track others and become stalkers). What we do is compromise and weigh up one right with another. It's not so complex. Hell it's even built into the European court systems already.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Facebook et al have been warned about their misuse of users' data for years now, and have shown no signs that they take privacy seriously. So it's going to take regulation to rein them in. I'm not sure how I feel about this, , but my opinion wouldn't change anything, and the "free speech" argument is spurious. Was speech somehow artificially "restricted" years ago, just because the Internet hadn't been invented? "Social networking" could go away tomorrow, and we'd all survive just fine.
(this is not a
and try to take over europe as well, how dare these europeans do something we don't like?
One aspect that doesn't seem to be obviously stated in the article, that in order to be certain what is related to the person who wants to be forgotten, online systems have to implement a rather tight tracking of this information. So if someone re-post picture on the Facebook, Facebook would have to check it against hashes of all other FB-hosted images to know where the origin is from (and re-share tags for all depicted users).
If I can't find something related to you -- I can't remove it.
And bonus -- multi-user content. If user A wants to be forgotten, but photo contains also users B and C, removing it might violate rights of other users (unless there's going to be a little digital eraser applied to the tagged face)
Hyperom.com
Europe's new privacy law could cost Google up to 2 percent of their income, which obviously threatens online free speech.
Unless the right is defined more precisely when it is promulgated over the next year or so, it could precipitate a dramatic clash between European and American conceptions of the proper balance between privacy and free speech, leading to a far less open Internet.
Speaking as an American, I want the European version of privacy and the American version of Free Speech.
In other words, I don't want some motherfucking marketing firm tracking me to sell me their shit - and it's always shit - and sell my information to the Government because they want to track "terrorists" or whatever to justify they're existence.
Which implies the desire for European privacy. They don't need to know who the fuck I am. WTF? Speaking as an atheist in the Bible Belt, I can tell you, anonymity is a goddamn blessing.
Otherwise, I'd need a god given machine gun to defend myself against these Goddamn Jesus freaks who think they need to kill me for not believing in their Sky God.
God Damn Motherfuckers!
Do not read this comment. I regret it already.
right to be forgotten exists in offline-world, and it did not cause any free speech issues. something which is personal information, is not something that is related to free speech. your ideas expressed, public posts made, public statements, discussions may be considered free speech. but, photographs of your son and daughter, can not.
what im i saying. taking this shit seriously : the real issue is google, facebook and similar going deprived of 2% of their annual income. that's the whole point of this anxiety.
well. we, the people dont give two shits about google or facebook's 2% annual income. they can lose it, and still sit pretty.
and, this does not have any kind of effect on the 90-100% of the rest of the internet, where content is created by small people or businesses - they are not making money selling people's personal information to megacorporations anyway. (ads are not relevant - small sites cant run all encompassing tracking networks like facebook )
Read radical news here
You have a right to be forgotten; You do NOT have a right to make me forget!
Apparently her name is Virginia Da Cunha, so just go to Google pictures and search for "Virginia Da Cunha racy photos" (warning: NSFW! )
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
There's a difference between people knowing stuff now, and in 10 years a prospective employer looking at stuff that's on FB or Google now. What is relevant now might not be relevant later. But I know a few HR drones who wouldn't distinguish between me now and me 10 years ago.
You know,
I would be totally cool wit the idea of re-setting the entire planet to, like, 1977.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I agree, I dont see this as a threat to free speech, I think we will still be able to publish what you think more or less. I think the EU law is more about data protection and what businesses can do with the information they have directly or indirectly gleaned from you. And your rights to have that data destroyed. To make this a threat to "free speech" issue is like wrapping the argument in a "think of the children" issue. The only threat I see is to some major (american) advertisers business models. The call of a threat to free speech sounds like a political call to rally the support of the american public.
So don't post your life story on Facebook you nitwit. Those of us that refuse to use that damn privacy breaching POS know just like you do that in 10 years you ARE going to regret something YOU voluntarily put up there that is going to come back and haunt you. Making it a law that you can demand companies delete all information you not only posted freely, but that you voluntarily signed a contract allowing them to keep the data forever is just plain stupid. If you are dumb enough to post all that personal information to Facebook you shouldn't be surprised when it comes back to haunt you, nor should you have a legal right to request it's removal.
All this bill would do is ensure that Google, Facebook and others completely shutdown all local European presence. That means all those local jobs go away and all legal recourse is gone while at the same time everyone keeps using it. Unless of course you're willing to implement the great firewall of Europe and join China in a world where the powers that be can decide to rewrite history.
in a nutshell, it means that as a civilian, you have the right to ask a company to delete your data. That's actually a good thing in that it gives power to the consumer. And I wouldn't object if Google or FB invested that 2% into a good mechanism for deleting user data.
That differs from 'free speech' dramatically. TFA blurs this distinction. It's not "free speech" when FB or Google sits on user data and is not legally required to delete it, when the user asks for it.
The right to be forgotten? What about the responsibility to keep one's own private information private?
I have no problem with regulating the dissemination of private information held in confidence by online services, but information published by users or by people not affiliated with the online services in question should not receive any such protection in all but a few special cases (medical and financial information, for example).
When privacy and free speech are in conflict and there's no urgent and compelling reason to keep information private, free speech should always trump privacy.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
You're broadly right, but you're missing the fact that some of the information about you is gnoing to show up without you having posted it yourself. There might be both true and false statements made by others about you, or even made by others impersonating you. There should be laws that allow you to correct that if you find out, because like you say, in 10 years time that prank statement about you that someone else made will still be around and look like the honest truth.
So I followed the links down to the actual EU document, at which point the problem becomes clear. All the other issues aside, if it takes you 117 pages to explain a "basic right" then it seems to me that....
You're Not Doing It Right
-jon
No, I'm not joking. And stop calling me Shirley.
Human foolishness has historical value for teaching values to the young, naive, and possibly stupid.
Invoking Anti-Darwin will protect the rich, politicians, popes, mullahs ..., but endanger the public from a lack of information that could save their lives from idiots being leaders. Yes, George Bush is the poster child for Anti-Darwin rights. Fight Anti-Darwin rights/laws and protect US and EU from drunken idiots in politics.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The problem is that without this kind of legal entitlement you can not control what others publish about you.
For example, I've played World of Warcraft in the past, and as a result my characters have an activity feed associated with them showing timestamps with minute precision that I've never actually intended to share. Now the only thing require is for someone to leak who my characters are in the game and everyone online can tell exactly what I've been doing. These are things that, without such protections, you can not control, and they are a lot more complex and harder to avoid than directly posting your life to Facebook.
Other examples would be, for example, someone taking an innocent picture of themselves at a specific disclosed location featuring your vehicles number plate in the background. Thanks to that picture, now everyone knows where your vehicle was when it was taken, and without such rights there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.
mankind's inalienable rights, the ones the US founding fathers identified
This is precisely the problem that the rest of the world has with US and Americans.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Compared to Ronny RayGun, the Bush Bandits, and Slick Willy, Jimmy Carter was a breath of fresh air. And of course, who could resist the tales of his brother Billy? The 'bubbah' was a train wreck, but amusing as hell.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
You never know how the law or society turns out in the future. About 15 years ago it would have been kinda funny to dress as a suicide bomber for Halloween. Think it might be taken the wrong way if seen today?
All it takes is something you say or do and take a picture of is somehow being connected to some kind of criminal (or worse) behavior. Imagine the whole bull about "violent games" gaining traction again and you posting a pic of you playing some FPS game. Today, certainly no problem. But how's it going to work out in 5 years or 10? Maybe someone won't employ you because you're connected to "violent behavior".
How about letting the whole fat food craze go overboard as it usually does when people get hyped up? Consider yourself being shunned for that pic showing you wolfing down that Big Mac.
Or how about the worst case scenario, where you're in a picture with someone who later commits some kind of horrible crime? You didn't know about it, for you it was just some guy you knew, but now you're the guy who is very obviously a close buddy of a pedo. Here, I have the pic to prove it.
"Don't post an incriminating or embarrassing picture" is easily said, but you don't know today what will happen tomorrow. You don't know what pictures might come back to haunt you. So we may only post those crappy "please say cheese" lifeless pics that have been cleaned of any kind of background so they cannot, under any circumstances, be taken the wrong way?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I was reading Delete by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger recently and he has a very simple solution... put expiration dates on all data. I don't know that it's a basic human right to be forgotten, but it's pretty harsh to have a picture of one act of foolishness follow you around for 20 years.
Fortunately, Google sucks so badly now that she doesn't have much to worry about. A search for her name in Google Images brings up mostly pictures of other people, including various men, and many pictures that contain no people at all.
I see The New Republic doesn't seem to have a single story about ACTA in their pages.. yet the europeans are out protesting it in droves...Europeans want to protect privacy and suddenly someone from America is all over them..
I also notice the Standford law review doesn't return a single article written about that either..
Clean up your own house before you go telling others how to run theirs.
Demand to have him extradited!
At least the US feels that as long as the 'wronged' party is in a jurdiction that they control, they have the right to have foreign citizens extradited. Just look at the case of the UK hacker Gary McKinnon. Let's just hope Europe will be just as determined to have those evil foreigners punished.
Why should I be restricted by you? My right to privacy should exceed corporate "rights" to maximise future profit.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
So don't post your life story on Facebook you nitwit.
So if someone makes a relatively small mistake they should be forced to pay for it for the rest of their lives? Society doesn't work like that, even quite nasty criminals are eventually forgiven and don't have to declare their crimes when applying for jobs and the like any more. Getting a bit drunk and posting some stupid pics on Facebook is a fairly minor indiscretion in comparison.
People, especially young people, make mistakes. It doesn't make them nitwits, it makes them human.
but that you voluntarily signed a contract allowing them to keep the data forever is just plain stupid.
Well apparently people signing unfair and stupid contracts is so common we had to invent consumer protection laws and contract law to protect them. There is also the fact that if a company breeches a contract your only option is to sue them which is expensive and risky, so for stuff that is blatantly abusive we legislate against it as a kind of mass civil legal action by society.
You will get modded up for ranting against all the morons living in their idiocrasy, but the need for legal protections is well established and understood.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Sorry, I think a bigger risk is at stake.
You're right in the "coldly rational" sense that the old Economists used to go by. The problem is that there are a couple of smart evil critters at senior manager positions in these companies, who discovered that 20 billion dollars of influence can create the greatest Social Hack of the last 25 years. America forgot that the chief problem of small insular towns with only 200 people in them was that you could never escape The Day That You Insulted Mrs. Chadwick, because Nobody Insults Mrs. Chadwick.
With the advent of city conditions, people became too busy working to worry about The Disgraceful Remark. In a Post Insult-To-Mrs. Chadwick World, the world ... in a city... would be ... the same!
Now with the social services, the search engines are creating a passive version of that Long Memory, that does nothing for you when you behave, (mostly), but records forever when you don't.
Combined with outright malicious abuse by both the companies and the government, people aren't "just choosing" anymore. They need a little help.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
However it's still a historical fact. If someone writes about you on a blog, truthfully (I don't advocate the publishing of inaccuracies) then what right to you have to censor them in 10 years time?
This seems like it's set to become the next DMCA. Don't like what someone wrote; censor them.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Why doesn't Europe set up it's own version of Facebook?
We did. It's called netlog. And then the event horizon of Facebook's socio-gravitational pull engulfed the whole planet and surrounding satellites.
If I am misunderstanding you, please feel free to correct my mistaken assumptions.
Sure, it's a good thing to ask a company to delete profile data, posts, etc. that you have submitted in your user account information. The problem, however, is with search engines. In that case, Google acts as an index to information that is *already somewhere on the Internet.* There's a world of difference between me asking Google to delete a photo that I posted on picasaweb.google.com and asking Google not to index any references to me in their search algorithm. The correct way to deal with web sites that have data about me on the web is to ask them -- not Google or Yahoo or Bing or ${Random_Search_Engine} -- to remove any information about me. I mean think about it for more than half a second...just because Google has agreed not to index me doesn't mean that that information no longer exists on the web. If shadywebsite.com has embarrassing or revealing (ugh!) photos of me, people can still link to that even if Google doesn't list those photos on its search engine. It may be a bit harder to find, but it's still there! I'd rather be able to Google my own name and deal with web sites myself than have Google delete the indexes, but have the data still exist.
And honestly, I have a bit of a problem with forcing a web site to remove information about me just because I don't like what they are saying about me. The example in TFA about the convicted criminals wanting references to their crimes removed is a good example. My wife ran a business where one of her employees was skimming cash payments from the till. The employee was caught and convicted of stealing the money. Since she now has a documented criminal history, future employers will know that this person has a history of theft, and IF they choose to hire her anyway, they can at least keep an eye on her so they don't get ripped off, too. IMHO, that's a good thing -- but that's exactly the kind of "privacy" that this bill will "protect." Guess what, people? Actions have consequences. Sometimes it sucks to have to deal with the consequences of your actions, but sometimes it sucks to have to deal with the consequences of other peoples' actions too.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Please. Rosen is acting as a proxy for Google et al who can't be seen going up against this for PR reasons.
I am not saying in its present form it's workable, but the idea that somehow the right to be forgotten is at odds with free speech is total bullshit.
At least it will create a set of significant disincentives to people who want to come forward with this material, who can expect to be prosecuted for doing so, and that's a good thing.
Why are these two rights even being compared when the more obvious comparison is between the right to be forgotten and the threat of being blackmailed, manipulated , artificially limited and determined by your youthful mistakes and bad judgement before your brain had even finished maturing?
I know that Slashdot is filled with techie types and programmers and a supernormal number of those are people who have varying degrees of Asperger's Syndrome and therefore will voice comments like "meh. They made their bed. Let them lie in it". The whole POINT of the EU decision is to prevent that type of attitude from doing the damage it would do. Such "tough luck" attitudes represent nothing but an abysmal lack of insight into human character and the calculus of human relations.
Never before in human history have people been unable to walk away from truly youthful indiscretions. The consequences of this are far reaching and it's a brilliant insight on the part of the EU to recognize the potential for destructive and malignant power plays and the potential for people who would otherwise make real, vital contributions to society to exclude themselves from the public scrutiny that accomplishment would necessarily bring if a woman thought that the picture of the . of herself with the banana would inevitably surface one day.
This is something completely new- a forever memory machine focused in on you from the time of your birth, relentlessly taking pictures recording thoughts and documenting events. No creative person can survive that unscathed.
Now please, let the "fuck them, tough luck" commenters take the floor. ... but before they do, please, give generously:
http://www.autismspeaks.org/
i can't f'ing believe this crap .. is it ever going to end??
i have a worrisome feeling that mankind's inalienable rights, the ones the US founding fathers identified, will eventually be completely squished under a boot of tyranny. I mean every year there's a relentless assault on it. It's starting to feel like we're all huddled inside the Alamo. Except there's no Texian Army to avenge it.
You are an american, and you believe that mankind has specific inalienable rights. That's fine. The rest of the world may disagree, or broadly agree, but disagree to some parts (the right to bear arms for example). I'm certain that the rest of the world couldn't give a monkeys about the 10th amendment for example, but are much more concerned about the right not to be owned -- something that your founding fathers didn't identify.
Your precious founding fathers didn't enshrine a right to privacy. Doesn't mean it's not an inalienable right. Perhaps people in Europe have different opinions.
Your constitution isn't perfect.
Article 12 of the universal declaration of human rights.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap