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Japanese Court Demands 'Right To Be Forgotten' For Sex Offender (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A Tokyo court has ordered that Google remove any results linked to the arrest of a sex offender, after a judge ruled that he deserves to rebuild his life 'unhindered' by online records of his criminal history. Citing the right to be forgotten, the Saitma district court demanded the removal of all personal information online related to the conviction. Judge Hisaki Kobayashi argued that, dependent on the nature of the crime, an individual should be able to go through a fair rehabilitation process, which would include a clean sheet on their online records after a certain amount of time has passed. In this case, the unnamed man had requested that information from more than three years ago, related to his child prostitution and pornography crimes, be removed from Google's results.
Do the crime, do the time, that should be the end of it.
The West's obsession with adding people to lists, especially "sex offender registries" which make it nearly impossible to live in any city environment, really amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. If you're still supposedly a threat to society then you should still be in jail. If you're OK to be released from jail then you've paid your dues to society and you should regain all of your rights.
It is always depends on which point of view you look at this (not even touching the point of contention of free speech). You can see prison as mostly punishment or as rehabilitation. If you see it as rehabilitation, then having the punishment become a matter of public record, hinder the rehabilitation, make the people become paria, unemployable (even for job without children) social outcast - such I am not defending the crime , only the right to rehabilitation once the crime was paid especially socially.
I am for the right to be forgotten anyway : we enjoyed that right until google came up. before that, everybody could simply be forgotten by moving to the next village (exaggerating a bit but without a way to search for news archive this came down to this)...
But i can imagine that some people buying into "information wants to be free" and never lived in the time period pre-google where forgetting was the norm... Can't grasp at the issue. Or don't care.
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I had no idea who this guy was. Now I do. May I introduce you to the Streisand Effect?
Do you really?
Or did you, in your rush to smugly "introduce" the Streisand Effect (which hardly needs an introudction, as it is practically a meme here), fail to realize that you actually don't know who this guy is.
His name's not mentioned in the summary.
Its not mentioned in the article.
Its not mentioned in the article the article is linked to.
I mean sure, I expect if you put on your detective's hat and went looking for it specifically you would find it, but if you have to use google-fu just to find out that's not really the Streisand effect at all.
If the punishment is not adequate, then increase the punishment. When the punishment is fulfilled, the criminal has paid his dues in full. That's the way justice works. You don't get to pick and choose where and when to apply justice. Either you apply justice consistently or you admit that you believe in inequality.
A quick perusal above shows where people's heads are at on the 'right to be forgotten':
"We enjoyed that right until google came up. before that, everybody could simply be forgotten by moving to the next village"
"Before that, if you wanted to be forgotten, you simply moved and adopted a new name."
No, it was not a 'right' then, as there was nothing in the law to provide it, nor was it considered an unstated right assumed by society.
No, you were not forgotten, rather, new individuals were ignorant.
No, name changes were public record and so too were most criminal complaints – simply not having a trivial way to search them does not equate being inaccessible, and certainly not to being ‘Forgotten’.
Why target google searches alone? Shouldn’t someone need to go through the police records, newspaper archives (and any microfiche for places still using that at the time of the offense), magazines, comedians routines, and song lyrics (if the crime was public enough) - and any recordings thereof – to eliminate the references? As per 1984, you’re going to need a whole department working 24/7 to censor or rewrite all the data there ever was if you’re really pushing for ‘forgotten’ status.
Really though, this isn’t about a right. It’s about restriction of rights. What advocates of this restriction are really trying to do is eliminate access by society at large to public records. Since the very nature of public records is that they are publically accessible, they’re instead attacking the ability to search the records, in an attempt to make the data useless. Basically, it’s the same sort of political machinations you see in attempts to do end-runs around laws in US politics today: so called sanctuary cities deciding not to check the residency status of illegal aliens, or requiring state ID to vote to drive away minorities. It’s folks deliberately doing an end-run around the law.
What it really comes down to is this: If we’re not supposed to do something, be it identify someone as an ex-convict or other, then why can we do it through every other channel allowed except for a single one singled out simply because of it’s current popularity and ease of use?
It's no a question of punishment. It's a question of whether potential new victims have the right to be forewarned about people that have demonstrated harmful behavior in the past which they are likely to repeat in the future. The only part open to debate is how likely they are to reoffend, but as long as the probability is non-zero, I believe potential future victims have a right to know. The problem is actually one of classification; everyone from baby rapers to people who had sex with their girlfriend a day before her 18th birthday go on the same list, if if the later guy later married his girlfriend, he is still considered a "sex offender"! We need much more subtle classifications, and people who no longer pose any danger to society should not have to register.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
A few points.
1. There is such a thing as 'non-exclusive' pedophiles who will in fact 'pop a stiffy' with a suitably attractive 21 year old. In fact, there are quite a few of them. By putting them on the registry, you're drastically reducing the chances that they will find a woman they can be satisfied with and thereby (hopefully) avoid recidivism. Is this a huge concern? Probably not, since there's always the possibility they'd re-offend if they end up having kids of their own. However...
2. Most kids are diddled by people in their immediate family or close friends anyway. Stranger Danger is practically a fabrication, and these lists don't keep the majority of children safe because most children are victimized by people the family already knows - if not it's own members.
3. With 2 in mind, 'If only I had known' is actually part of the problem. The fact is, most children are victimized by relatives or very close friends of the family. Registries not only fail to protect against this threat most of the time, they create a false sense of security for parents and other caretakers. "He's not on the registry, so he must be safe." This effect almost certainly dwarfs the paltry protective effect the registry might otherwise have, given the structural problems with the problem of child molestation itself.