Slashdot Mirror
Irish Judge Orders 'The Internet' To Delete Video
New submitter edanto writes "A young Irish man wrongly accused of jumping from a taxi without paying the fare has secured a judgement from an Irish court ordering the video removed from the entire Internet. Experts from Google, Youtube, Facebook, and others must tell the court in two weeks if this is technically possible. The thing is, the video is accurate, it is only a comment that wrongly identified Eoin McKeogh as the fare-jumper in the video that is inaccurate. It's not clear if the judge has made any orders about the comment."
Stupid judge, you can't order that, you ignorant ninny...
By the powers vested in me, by myself, I hereby order you (the ninny) to stop breathing now and forever. You may be using oxygen I'll need later in my life.
It's only wasted on you.
If you've got a Microsoft Surface, download the video from YouTube - pronto!
#DeleteChrome
By the power invested by my lion tamer hat, I order unicorns to stop farting rainbows.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Sure, the obvious spin the summary evokes is that the judge is one of those numbskull government bureaucrats, who thinks the Internet has a central authority that can respond to such requests. Let's all laugh at the silly judge and reinforce our anti-government hivemind.
On the other hand, the judge likely ordered that the video be taken down, knowing perfectly well that it's impossible to be removed completely. However, those big companies make up the majority of the video's audience, so if they take down the video (and its associated accusation of Mr. McKeogh), the effect is to substantially reduce the harm to Mr. McKeogh's reputation... which is exactly the goal. Since the ruling is in Ireland, where those companies keep their double-Irish tax avoidance entities, the companies will of course want to stay in the good grace of the Irish courts.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
So, if there's some video I don't like on the Internet, I just go there and add a comment saying that it is this Irish dude doing whatever it is that is in the video? I can think of lots of embarrassing videos that various celebrities would like to see go away. Just add "Hey! That's Eoin McKeogh!" to the video and then sue in Ireland.
This is just one of many problems I see with this ruling. It just was the most interesting one.
technically it's not that difficult. There are engineers who know which screws to remove, where the hooks and claws sit, etc, in order to disassemble the Internet and pull out that video. It's a matter of cost, mainly, and while it is a daunting task already to dismantle the machine, it's even more difficult to properly put it back together in the end.
I wouldn't be the one to risk that, tbh. What if you, say, forget a gear, or mismatch the pressure release valve?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Taking a stand against ridiculous court orders. Civil disobedience to promote awareness and justice. Defiance of an illegitimate order from a lawful authority.
Basically, to point out the futility of what is frankly an idiotic order. The experts ought to tell the judge that once it's on the internet, it's there for all time.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Also a testament to the stupidity of mob justice. Before it emerged that this guy had been wrongly identified, you had people posting his home address on busily trafficked sites, his phone number, metaphorically throwing nooses over lamp posts, the works. Afterwards, the same people were still trying to pin something on him somehow because he had the temerity to make them look like trigger happy vigilante clowns without a clue, which is what they are.
I don't blame him for trying to strike back through the legal system but since the video doesn't in fact identify him I'm not sure why he wants it pulled down. Renamed maybe might be a better option.
No.
This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Simple Questions: Simpleton Edition.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Except he is innocent. So the Streisand effect is a good thing for him if it gets the word out that it wasn't him in the video.
There should be an authority that can prevent Slashdot from being trolled by a summary that seems to have no basis in the original story. We could call this hypothetical super-being an editor.