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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.
I think it's reasonably certain that she did NOT understand the consequences. You do understand what I said about this being a new phenomenon, right? People don't naturally think "if I share this with a small group of people, it's liable to be shared by the world." Likewise, it's not judicious to suppose she "deserves" worldwide condemnation. There are many, many cases we are seeing where people are getting into similar situations. This ought to tell you that online shaming is a problem, and it's not going to stop by us throwing our hands up and saying "eh, it's her fault." Because really, it's not her fault: it's a new situation created by technology that humans weren't equipped to deal with.