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Right To Be Forgotten? Web Privacy Debate in Italy After Women's Suicide (ndtv.com)
The suicide of a woman who battled for months to have a video of her having sex removed from the internet is fuelling debate in Italy on the "right to be forgotten" online. The 31-year-old, identified as Tiziana, was found hanged at her aunt's home in Mugnano, close to Naples in the country's south on Tuesday, reports Agence France-Presse. From the report: Her death came a year after she sent a video of herself having sex to some friends, including her ex-boyfriend, to make him jealous. The video and her name soon found their way to the web and went viral, fuelling mockery of the woman online. The footage has been viewed by almost a million internet users. In a bid to escape the humiliation, Tiziana quit her job, moved to Tuscany and tried to change her name, but her nightmare went on. The words "You're filming? Bravo," spoken by the woman to her lover in the video, have become a derisive joke online, and the phrase has been printed on T-shirts, smartphone cases and other items. After a long court battle, Tiziana recently won a "right to be forgotten" ruling ordering the video to be removed from various sites and search engines, including Facebook.
Absolutely. This is all her fault.
But this IS new. While public shaming certainly existed before (and, interestingly, is considered inappropriate in our modern judicial system), to not admit that instantaneous electronic dissemination of information by anonymous individuals -- who face no consequences for their actions -- is radically different than what any society has ever dealt with before would be absurd.
Just to elaborate a bit, all speech is constitutionally protected in the US
... except for libel, slander, perjury, credible threats, inciting violence, copyright violations, security clearance violations, illegal recordings, disclosing sealed court documents, public obscenity, etc.