Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Says EU 'Right To Be Forgotten' Would Harm Privacy
judgecorp writes "The European Commission has proposed a "right to be forgotten" online, which would allow users to remove personal data they had shared. The idea has had a lot of criticism, and now Facebook claims it would actually harm privacy. Facebook says the proposal would require social media sites to perform extra tracking to remove data which has been copied to other sites — but privacy advocates say Facebook has misunderstood what the proposal is all about."
privacy advocates say Facebook has misunderstood what the proposal is all about."
Misunderstood, my ass. Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest.
Free Martian Whores!
Sort of like how setting "Do Not Track" by default is supposed to harm people? Poor advertisers. They might have to get real jobs instead of being online stalkers.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The "right not to be punched in the face" would harm health?
I think I'll take Facebook's views on privacy with a grain of salt.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Facebook says the proposal would require social media sites to perform extra tracking to remove data which has been copied to other sites
Maybe they can start by not copying user data to other sites.
To grant one person the right to be forgotten is to deprive another of the right to remember. The sharing of information once legitimately published cannot become illegitimate just because the person involved doesn't want it to be known. The "right" to be forgotten is a form of censorship and has nothing at all to do with privacy.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Think twice before you post ANYTHING online. Because once its there, its there forever. Use discretion.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! -- Upton Sinclair http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
Actually, it isn't far-fetched to assume that lawmakers will do something idiotic that causes a bunch of consequences they didn't intend. While I can easily see Facebook trying to language-lawyer this shit to their advantage, I'd give it 50/50 chance the law actually does imply the goofy stuff Facebook says it does.
I believe that laws should always be enforced in full and to the letter, along with all unintended consequences. This way, broken laws can be quickly identified and fixed (or repealed). It also would prevent prosecutors from selectively enforcing obscure provisions of the law to target specific individuals.
When judges and juries start making exceptions for cases that are "obviously not what was meant" we just encourage more sloppy law-making.
The "right to be forgotten" seems like a bizarre concept. Imagine that my friends post their personal phone numbers and email addresses on Facebook, and I sync that with my phone's address book.
When my friends decide to delete their Facebook account, what exactly happens to my phone's address book? Is that contact information also removed from my phone automatically? Must I keep the Facebook app on my phone just to ensure that my contacts will be deleted on-demand?
What if I already had that information? What if I have had several phone calls with my friend? Is the Facebook app responsible for removing all phone records from my phone to ensure that I don't have access to my friend's phone number?
Is is technically possible to do a one-time sync from Facebook to my phone's address book, or must I also store tracking information that uniquely identifiers each of my friends Facebook profiles? What happens if I uninstall the Facebook app? Must Facebook preemptively delete my contacts just to ensure that I don't keep any illegally?
In other words, FB just wants to sell your data, and will come up with any excuse to justify that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Can you say Facebook downgrade? Mmmmhmmmm...
"the proposal would require social media sites to perform extra tracking to remove data which has been copied to other sites"
aka
We sold the user date to 100's of other companies....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Why do you assume this law is directed only to Facebook or other free web services?
Fuck facebook Fuck facebook Fuck facebook They are misunderstanding on purpose what is clearly written, also they cite an impossible limitation: they cannot control what is published in other sites/social networks. Well, no one is asking to achieve the impossible, just erase my data from your cloud whenever I ask
Silly claim by Facebook. Facebook should already ask you before you send any of your information to a different site. If the user accepts this, FB wouldn't be on the hook for the data on other sites (assuming the EU law was made rationally), therefore they wouldn't need to "keep more tracking data". It would be the user's responsibility to knock on the door of each site they allowed FB to share information with and tell them to delete all their data. Of course, if FB is sharing your data to other sites without your permission, that's a whole other issue.
Please do track to which sites you are copying my information, and also please can I see the list.
Option to remove some information from specific site would be nice.
Facebook has no right to comment on this. We're talking about a person's right to privacy, not a corporation's right to privacy.
Facebook is not a person; it is a corporation. It has one end goal: to make money. Everything Facebook says is driven by that one goal. If Facebook says that the right for people to be forgotten would harm privacy, what it really means is that the right for people to be forgotten would reduce Facebook's profits.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
No, I didn't. It's just that the words you use in your entire message basically boils down to willfully handing over information about yourself as if that is the only way you are ever tracked. Searching for a product on Amazon, a search query on Google, merely visiting any particular site, or any number of things are sufficient to begin building profiles about you and your internet habits. It isn't always just posting your information on facebook for them to harvest or using gmail.
I agree that people shouldn't be posting things onto the internet they'd rather others not know about, but on that same vain I don't think the complex web of advertising networks embedded on practically every site on the internet should be able to pull literally everything you do on the internet and everywhere you go to figure out how to serve you ads.
How is it "abuse?" People sign up for it knowing they're posting a whole bunch of shit out on the internet where everyone can see everything.
I don't have a facebook account, but I know people who do so I'm probably on it. See the problem now?
Free Martian Whores!
.... and took it upon themselves to post information about me on-line. So as a non-FB user, I have every right to be forgotten when I never gave them (the user or Facebook) permission to put information about me out there. I didn't create an account. I tell everyone I know to not put information about me on Facebook or on any social network, but when someone else takes it upon themselves to post info about me, now FB claims that they own that data.
This is where I have big issues with Privacy laws and companies who data mine and then sell that data.
Don't I have every right to be forgotten, since I went out of my way to avoid being "remembered"?
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
I have no commercial relationship with Facebook. I've never visited their site. If they are maintaining information about me, it's entirely without my consent. I'd like to click a box to disappear myself from their incidental radar screen (such as if people I know unwisely divulge my image or personal details), but it appears that I'd first have to agree to the Facebook TOS to do so.
Let's have a law that enables divorce without TOS.
If you join Facebook, you have just signed away your rights to privacy. Zuckerberg has as good as said so.
The law is an ass. Internet law is a dumb-ass. The law just can't keep up with the internet.
The idiots who use Facebook deserve to be tracked.
And what of those who don't use Facebook, but for whom Facebook has created shadow accounts?
Do they deserve to be tracked too?
Individuals have an absolute right to their memories. They have a right to share them and keep them in the public sphere. I can't help but think a "Right to be forgotten" would be used to hide curruption. It may be used by felons to hide their crimes from future employers.
More specifically, as it was described before, "if an individual no longer wants his personal data to be processed or stored by a data controller, and if there is no legitimate reason for keeping it, the data should be removed from their system" (see http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/12/26&format=PDF ) and the question becomes, if someone else published something about the person, does that information fall under the same provision.
The easy way around it was to narrow it down to self-published information.
I.e. if I publish a photo of myself with a friend on FB but at a later time decide to invoke le droit à l’oubli then FB should remove the photo from all of their systems. If someone managed to re-publish it from FB, that's no longer FB's problem. And, should that friend publish a copy I can't demand it to be removed (or sue when it isn't) as that would require a total tracking and censorship of everything other users post. So every time some other friend publishes a photo or a post that mentions me, FB would have to prevent them from doing so. Heck, all old posts with my name and photos should disappear as soon as I demand it, or have my name and face blanked out. Tell me that wouldn't freak users out :)
"I published a bunch of photos from my party and suddenly there's this blur over [REDACTED]'s face! Do I have a virus?! Wait, I typed [REDACTED] but all I get in my post is "redacted" :( HALP!"
Hyperom.com
Indeed, when you post to a site like FB, you retain copyright of the post, but grant the site and anyone who you grant access to the data a license to re-use it (share, comment, etc). Being able to pull that license also affects third parties (other FB users) and *their* comments, derivitave posts, etc. that were made under the initial license granted.
You're clearly not someone worth having a discussion with.
http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/document/review2012/com_2012_11_en.pdf
Note that the regulation exempts pretty much anything that actually matters: the EU itself, national security, and police. "Private" information means pretty much anything that is personally identifiable. It also doesn't mention free speech or freedom of the press, and doesn't seem to have exceptions for reporting on politicians.
Because after all, who can we trust to protect our privacy better than Facebook?!
Ya, that was totally a troll post. Thank you faceless gutless enemy who happened to get mod points.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.