Slashdot Mirror
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.
,,,those who have been forgotten.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
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.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Is it reasonable to have reports of this incident immediately served up when any potential employer googles his name?
Yes. Google's job is to index the context of web pages. Google is NOT responsible for the content or truthfulness of those pages. If web pages out there have his name on them Google should return those pages when someone searches for that string. If this man has a problem with the content of a page he should take it up with the people who published the page.
At least in a sane world, this is how things would operate.