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BBC Curates The "Right To Be Forgotten" Links That Google Can't
An anonymous reader writes, quoting the BBC's Internet Blog: "Since a European Court of Justice ruling last year, individuals have the right to request that search engines remove certain web pages from their search results. Those pages usually contain personal information about individuals."
The BBC, however, is not obligated to completely censor the results, and so has taken an approach that other media outlets would do well to emulate: they're keeping a list of those pages delisted by the search engines, and making them easy to find through the BBC itself. Why?
The BBC has decided to make clear to licence fee payers which pages have been removed from Google's search results by publishing this list of links. Each month, we'll republish this list with new removals added at the top.
We are doing this primarily as a contribution to public policy. We think it is important that those with an interest in the “right to be forgotten” can ascertain which articles have been affected by the ruling. We hope it will contribute to the debate about this issue. We also think the integrity of the BBC's online archive is important and, although the pages concerned remain published on BBC Online, removal from Google searches makes parts of that archive harder to find.
Looking at some of those links it's obvious the "right to be forgotten" law is extremely dangerous to the free press.
Why would you having been in debt should bar you from a new job ? Why being lesbian should bring you problem ? Why a petty theft when you were 18 should still haunt you when you are 30 ? Keep in mind most justice system are rehabilitating in Europe, not mostly retributive like the US one. And you have as such a right to have for your average sentence to not have a fault you paid for with prison haunt you and bar your new job (there are some exception e.g. pedophilia due to the nature of the law breaking). If every job seeker are looked up in google and the first stuff which pops up is something you did 10 years ago and either grew out of it, or paid the price with a prison, that would bar you from occupation and reintegration into society, and make recidivism more probable. Asking firm to not do that would not work due to human nature. Removing it from google would work.
Keep in mind that until end of the 90ies we HAD a way to be forgotten : nobody would go into paper clip from 10 years before and check what you did. But with google even the most minor stuff stays forever. As I mentioned here, a society which do not forget, is a society which (on average) do not forgive. And that make rehabilitation far harder. You want to live in a society which do not forget even the slightiest transgression ? Well good luck with that. I certainly do not want. Not because I am a law breaking human, but because freedom lies at the edge of the road, not in the middle. And that is not even counting what children/teenager/young adult can do stupid legal stuff which can mark them forever, like partying drunk and being in the news. Well before the 90ies unless you want into archive journal you would never know as an employer. Nowadays if somebody catch you you have no recourse google remember forever. Heck just being outted as gay, lesbian or even transsexual can bring you a lot of problem, even in western democracy like the US. Thus the right to be forgotten. BBC should really be the first to understand that. But I am guessing they would rather fuck up people than admit it. And yes I am aware that some bad people will try to abuse it. That is why normally the court should be the one deciding whether a right to be forgotten is there , or not.
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I wouldn't want to work for a company who judged me for the stupid shit I did as a teenager or if I were a homosexual.
You are entitled to a private life, but if you make something public, it's public, period. No take backs. Not because I said so but because of the nature of public information.
There is no technological fix for that and Europeans, and yourself, have a deluded "solution" to a reality and a fact of life which is not actually a problem and does not go away, ever.
Own who you are, be ashamed of nothing, including your mistakes. Anyone who would bully you into submission with sensitive areas of your life is no one you should want to associate with and merely an announcement of your own insecurity and weakness.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You are entitled to a private life, but if you make something public, it's public, period. No take backs. Not because I said so but because of the nature of public information.
For the sake of argument, what if someone with a twitter feed decides it's newsworthy and does it for you?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Let's discuss this article that was the subject of a removal request: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-sco...
It's about a rape. The only people mentioned are the criminal, the police inspector in charge of the case and the criminal's friend. The criminal wouldn't have been able to make the request (it's relevant), and there is little reason for the inspector to want to, so it was almost certainly the friend. Or probably ex-friend now.
There is no suggestion that the friend did anything wrong. None at all. He was just caught up in someone else's crime, and the media decided to name him because they can. Is it reasonable to have reports of this incident immediately served up when any potential employer googles his name? It's not really relevant, but it is very embarrassing. It talks about his private sex life, and associates him with someone who committed a horrible crime. I'm sure a lot of employers would think twice about hiring someone like that, especially in a role where they deal with customers who might google their name. It sucks but it's also true.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You could argue that it's a credit reference agency's job to report anything that might give a potential lender concern, but the law says otherwise because society decided that mistakes should eventually be forgiven and people should be allowed to reform.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Because you'll have a hard time proving he based his decision on it. And unless the rapists (ex) friend is some rare and unique specialist in a hotly contested field, the employer will just toss him and move on to the next applicant who has generally the same level of experience and training but one less "bad thing" lurking about. Real or not, relevant or not, the employer will not bother to double check. Why should he? To him, hiring A or B doesn't make a difference.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So basically you are saying don't trust anyone with anything you wouldn't want made public.
In Europe, we don't want to live in a society like that, where we all distrust each other at a fundamental level and there is absolutely no expectation of privacy or ability to leave your past mistakes behind you.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC