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.

Comments

Seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

It is near the top of a very short list of big affronts, because the implementation does not live up to the spirit of the law. Registries increase the risk of recidivism because they ruin the life of the person.

A criminal who is ready to change his ways finds out that nobody will hire him, nobody will lease to him, and because of this he cannot make ends meet. Even if the frustration alone wasn't enough to push him right back into a life of crime (which it understandably is), the inability to afford food and heat force the issue.

There is also the issue of vigilantism, which is itself illegal, but registries enable it. These self-appointed judge/jury/executioners decide to dish out a little more punishment whenever they feel like it, and people who are trying to put their lives back together are made vulnerable to injury/death because if the registries.

I realize the intent if registries is noble. But the application is far from it. Since they don't work out in practice as they are envisioned in theory, they should be eliminated.

Justice isn't just about protecting the innocent, but also about correct treatment of the reformed.

Re:Seems reasonable

[ooloorie]

This isn't about a "sex offender registry", it's about editing history for the convenience of a former criminal.

Government-maintained sex offender registries should be abolished. But if private web sites keep such information, they should have a right to.

Re:Seems reasonable

[vux984]

The problem with letting people have this right to be forgotten is that it starts a censorship and once you start something like that, even for good intentions with one person, it can be misused.

The problem with not letting people have this right is that individuals are already being harmed.

If a person has been found guilty in a court of law, like the person in this case has, well then that's just too bad. Probably shouldn't have done the crime. Yes it will make life more difficult

The biggest problem with this attitude is that if he's going to be punished for his whole life, then he might as well be a criminal. What is the point of turning his life around and being a good law abiding citizen if your attitude towards him is: "too bad",

He can't move start over somewhere else; and even the passage of time won't ever leave it behind. 30 years ago, nobody would find out about a crime you did unless it was an international spectacle unless they went back to your country, perhaps even your region within that country and dug around in old newspapers. Now its the first hit on google, around the world, forever. At least until someone else with the same name does something more recently and more heinous. If you have an obscure name, you'll be immortalized in a way that just doesn't

So, "too bad, so sad" isn't a solution.

I agree with you that right to be forgotten laws aren't the solution either, they are clumsy and they resemble censorship.

I'd rather see search engines evolve to prune 'old news' and old search results more intelligently. And then right to be forgotten might not be necessary.

For example, by default searches for X don't return any "non-local news" or "blogs" or "twitter" that are more than 3 years old. If you want to look for "news" from New Hampshire from 2005 you need to specify that in the search.

Major events, politics, and things that are of historical significance etc are excempt. But John Unusual-name Doe was arrested for indecent exposure after getting drunk and failing to pull his pants up before leaving a restroom appearing in some podunk local news should not be still be the first hit for that guys name 10 years later 2 continents away.

It should be findable, but it should be a couple "layers" deep. Humans are largely "out-of-sight out-of-mind". We don't need to have our names stricken from old news papers and old court records to get our lives back because while those old news papers and records still exist, and can be read by anyone at anytime, nobody actually bothers unless its important.

But google won't *let* us forget, because it keep throwing htem up in our face, on that search query... until something more news worthy with those terms finally happens.

Re:Who?

[vux984]

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.

Increase the punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Increase the punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

I WAS molested as a kid, and the registered sex offender list is meaningless. I'd rather have had my attacker stay in prison until he's rehabilitated, not put on the same list two teenagers that sexted are on.

The whole idea is ludicrous. On top of all that, the moment a sex offender moves intuitive the area, property values tank. There's no good result from it, since most sexual attacks come from someone the kid knows anyway (in my case it was my piano teacher).

It's just far too nebulous to take seriously. I suppose a repeat offender might need to be tracked, but unless you know how to look up penal codes all sex offenders look like cold molesters, and that's just not true.

So we need a Ministry of Truth now?

[quietwalker]

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?

Re:Erm...

[Locke2005]

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.