Slashdot Mirror
NY Bill Would Require Removal of Inaccurate, Irrelevant Or Excessive Statements (washingtonpost.com)
schwit1 writes: In a bill aimed at securing a "right to be forgotten," introduced by Assemblyman David I. Weprin and (as Senate Bill 4561 by state Sen. Tony Avella), New York politicians would require people to remove "inaccurate," "irrelevant," "inadequate" or "excessive" statements about others... Failure to comply would make the search engines or speakers liable for, at least, statutory damages of $250/day plus attorney fees.
The Washington Post reports the bill's provisions would be as follows: Within 30 days of a "request from an individual, all search engines [and online speakers] shall remove...content about such individual, and links or indexes to any of the same, that is 'inaccurate', 'irrelevant', 'inadequate' or 'excessive,' and without replacing such removed...content with any disclaimer [or] takedown notice.... [I]naccurate', 'irrelevant', 'inadequate', or 'excessive' shall mean content, which after a significant lapse in time from its first publication, is no longer material to current public debate or discourse, especially when considered in light of the financial, reputational and/or demonstrable other harm that the information...is causing to the requester's professional, financial, reputational or other interest, with the exception of content related to convicted felonies, legal matters relating to violence, or a matter that is of significant current public interest, and as to which the requester's role with regard to the matter is central and substantial."
The Washington Post reports the bill's provisions would be as follows: Within 30 days of a "request from an individual, all search engines [and online speakers] shall remove...content about such individual, and links or indexes to any of the same, that is 'inaccurate', 'irrelevant', 'inadequate' or 'excessive,' and without replacing such removed...content with any disclaimer [or] takedown notice.... [I]naccurate', 'irrelevant', 'inadequate', or 'excessive' shall mean content, which after a significant lapse in time from its first publication, is no longer material to current public debate or discourse, especially when considered in light of the financial, reputational and/or demonstrable other harm that the information...is causing to the requester's professional, financial, reputational or other interest, with the exception of content related to convicted felonies, legal matters relating to violence, or a matter that is of significant current public interest, and as to which the requester's role with regard to the matter is central and substantial."
"inaccurate," "irrelevant," "inadequate" or "excessive"
According to whom? Free speech, etc, etc, etc... As long as it's not ruled libel in court, it's just an opinion someone doesn't like. Yeah, there are a lot of assholes out there that need to grow some skin or get off of the Intertubes.
This is just more nonsense from Luddites that will never see a vote, although lawyers would love it since it smells like litigation...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Politicians being able to control the conversation about them.
I guess they must be worried that alternate media, is decreasing the effectiveness of traditional media.
A problem with the political system is that often people are elected who don't know how to think carefully.
This seems like a law written and intended to be used by politicians to remove anything they dont want you to know about them ,especially after they do something shady
/tinfoil
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I wonder why.
The first sentence is really a sentence fragment and doesn't form a complete thought.
The second sentence is irrelevant and according to the law must be removed.
Then it's good that it is politicians in NY that are doing this rather than some in the South.
Yet another bill that makes no sense...
I dunno how long people need to keep saying the exact same thing about these bills, but as always, it all comes down to who defines ""inaccurate," "irrelevant," "inadequate" or "excessive" statements". You cannot pass laws based on such broad and subjective terms as it'll always end up being exploited by the exact people who shouldn't.
This. I don't understand why people are so worried.
The combination of this bill along with the New York Times being, well, in New York is going to be epic. The press is chock full of misleading and excessive statements about Trump and they can be ht again and again by this rule... I'd say a goal should be to act fast enough to make the NYT pull physical papers from vending machines and stands.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'll just put a disclaimer before all my content. "Do not consume this material if you are a resident of New York."
Of course this bill would also have the side effect that Trump's entire Twitter timeline would have to be erased.
#DeleteChrome
While this law would be incredibly hard to enforce, maybe we shouldn't be so down on politicians actually doing something, anything at all, in favor of protecting privacy?
As far as I'm concerned public data is much less of a problem than private data collection, but I'm really glad to see at least some legislative effort being directed at privacy in this country. As it stands now we have almost no protections at all.
Regarding your cynicism about suppressing political speech: any law can be abused, but given the stipulation about public discourse it seems as though it would be harder for a public figure like a politician to abuse this than it would be for someone else.
This bill fails the first amendment, in that one person can restrain another's speech. There are already laws about fraud, libel, and slander, which cover malicious speech, but nothing allows restraining merely "out of date" speech.
alternate media, is decreasing the effectiveness of traditional media.
'fake news', is decreasing the effectiveness of propaganda?
Eh, whatever, all the media is doing a bang up job of keeping everybody fixated on one thing right now. They are also making it possible for things like to this to pass by creating popular demand. I wish we would penalize politicians who try to impose unconstitutional legislation. Voting them out would be good enough
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Sorry, but Vladimir Putin would have no standing under this law, it specifically exempts foreign heads of state.
This gets to the heart of the problem around post-truth. Just who defines "truth"?
How does that fit in to the checks and balances in a democratic society? Does everything have to go through the courts?
- Paul
statutory damages of $250/day plus attorney fees
So if it's a blogger with no ads on their site, it will bankrupt them. If it's a corporation, it's change in the couch. That's not justice! What is it with these 'fines'?
Bad legislation is bad legislation no matter how lofty of it's purpose.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Quit changing the subject.
And stop with the redbaiting, retard.
Of course this bill would also have the side effect that Trump's entire Twitter timeline would have to be erased.
... in advance.
I think Donald Trump is silly and orange, and I don't like him. My previous statement is irrelevant. Please fine me for it, I dare you!
We already have legislation prohibiting libel and slander, so this new bill is not only "excessive" (goes way to far) and inadequate (way too vague), it is also "irrelevant" (due to being unconstitutional and unenforceable, as well as unnecessarily duplicating enforceable laws already on the books). What a stupidly reactionary waste of time.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
we just elected a president who's doing everything he can to stack the courts with folks friendly to these kind of laws. That's not hyperbole, it was one of his campaign promises.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The subject is Trump supporters, though it is terribly funny that the color "red" is so popular among wannabe corrupt dictators, so terribly funny.
"Doing something, anything!" rather than taking a beat and coming up with something measured, effective, and realistic is how we got such such crimes against humanity as the PATRIOT act and friends.
The fuckers behind this law are evil.
What do you expect? It's New York.
I deem my taxes irrelevant and decided I am no longer obligated to pay them.
Oh for fuck's sake. I wrote a whole reply here and then misclicked on the cancel button. I'm not going to write that again.
The short: your tautology is a gross oversimplification. Bad legislation may be bad legislation, but it can none the less produce positive effects.
...by the Washington Post, or any of the morons out there that believed this Russian ''hacked" our election bullshit.
We have the 1st amendment, we don't need a FASCIST bill like this which will only be used as a subjective means to trounce over our first amendment rights. Anyone that supports this is either in a position to abuse it, or a fucking moron. Well a fucking moron either way.
Is this true?
On the one hand, this is a reasonable point. On the other... the PATRIOT Act wasn't created in a vacuum. It took functioning intelligence and law enforcement services and upended them all because of a single failure. If we had no law enforcement whatsoever, and then some disaster struck, is the right response to that, "No, we should just keep on having no law enforcement at all unless we can be totally certain that it's perfect."?
There are perhaps some dystopian scenarios where anarchy is the preferable state, but this doesn't seem to be one of those.
While this law would be incredibly hard to enforce, maybe we shouldn't be so down on politicians actually doing something, anything at all, in favor of protecting privacy?
No, fuck off. Free speech is the most important part of a free society.
If the content in question was hosted on a server located and operated outside the USA then this law is going to have no effect on that content, but you can be pretty sure we will have some USA based lawyers making such demands anyway because they don't understand how the Internet works. My guess is if passed it will followed up by another law to force USA based ISP to block offshore sites with such content once law makers realise that not every website is actually in the USA.
from dumb asses from New York! Lets ban soda because it makes you fat! Seriously - so does eating too much pasta and pizza - why don't you BAN that too! How about ban Rosie O' Donnell - and spoons - they make her fat and she has a fat mouth.....
There NY how about that! Does that VIOLATE your new law?
The Truth is a Virus!!!
You fuck off too friend. Thanks for keeping up a high level of discourse, I certainly find your argument to be compelling.
Only if Twitter is based in New York. New York State laws don't actually apply to companies in, say, Washington....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Sometimes stupid positions need to be lambasted. In your case, you're attacking a cornerstone of a free society and a defining characteristic of the United States.
As a test, I propose the law first be applied to statements made by the bill's authors and supporters through the next election cycle.
... is that it comes rather crossly at odds with freedom of thought. While the intent behind desiring such a notion can be laudable, and the dissemination of provably false information should be halted as quickly as possible, with the violators punished appropriately, applying such a notion to facts ultimately amounts to attempting to manipulate what other people are allowed to think, or to believe, by censoring or limiting access to whatever truthful accounts may have existed. While one might argue that is unfair to judge someone harshly for some things which might have occurred long ago, in reality, this problem is not caused by the mere availability of a historical account, since a person with a genuinely balanced perspective on the matter may see that an act committed so long ago should be thought of as inconsequential to what that person may be actually like today, and judge them instead of whatever merits they can present about themselves today. In the end, trying to erase records of misconduct just because they might make somebody continue to feel bad amounts to the effective rewriting of history, and as the saying goes, if we do not learn from the mistakes made in history, we are certain to only repeat them. However much we might want to not make someone live for the rest of their lives with the consequences of a stupid choice they might have made only once in their lives, that is, I'm afraid, just the way that life is. There are, and indeed should *always* be consequences for our choices, and if we decide that some of the most negative consequences for bad choices should be removed just because they make somebody feel bad about themselves or because they are unable to find anyone who will treat them fairly today because of it, then we are implicitly giving a commensurate level of permission to just go and do whatever stupid thing that they did again.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Reading the bill, it is clear to me that this is plainly and clearly unconstitutional. They didn't even try to hide it. If it passes, it wouldn't survive the the courts.
The thing about arguing via easily parroted slogan is that you tend to miss out on subtleties like what it is, exactly, that you're arguing about. I can tell from your previous post that you think this is a discussion about free speech, and I assume that's your "defining characteristic of the United States" which you think you're defending.
I don't mean to dismiss that entirely, freedom of speech probably factors into this somewhere, but speech is a notoriously difficult thing to nail down and its freedom has never been absolute. Not even here in the US. I could make a comparison between what the summary is describing and libel, but let me point something else out instead: "after a significant lapse in time from its first publication" is stipulated as a requirement for this law. Does this sound like suppressing speech, or does it sound like burying history?
Or do you not distinguish between those things? "Free speech" is the term that's used, but speech is transient, ephemeral. It is of the moment. Once the issue has passed and "no longer material to current public debate or discourse" then it's not so crazy to think that what was said at that time is no longer speech, but rather history.
History, of course, has its own value, but that's a separate discussion.
While this law would be incredibly hard to enforce, maybe we shouldn't be so down on politicians actually doing something, anything at all, in favor of protecting privacy?
Not when the "something" is obviously unconstitutional. Besides, passing flawed laws that just because "something" has to be done tends to result in truly horrible laws and harms everyone.
But this is the internet. Someone in New York just has to load Trump's timeline and BAM, jurisdiction.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Does this sound like suppressing speech, or does it sound like burying history?
Both.
I don't find the distinction you're trying to draw between "speech" and "history" to be even slightly persuasive. Most speech is transient, but certainly not all speech. Speech doesn't cease to become speech merely because it was recorded. I would argue that the political diatribes that survived from ancient Rome are still speech, and political speech at that.
Not when the "something" is obviously unconstitutional.
Right... "obviously." Bleh, I knew when I said that that it would be controversial. Controversy isn't a problem, I don't mind discussing things, but invariably someone doesn't read all of the replies, or two people post at the same time or something, and I do mind repeating myself.
All right, if by "obviously unconstitutional" you're talking about free speech, then you can read the thread started by the insulting guy. He seemed to think this was about free speech too. I don't think that's so obvious. If you're talking about some other constitutional clause, then by all means share.
For your bit about "something needs to be done" you can read what the AC said and what I said in reply, but the gist is that when you're starting from nothing it is hard to go down. Possible maybe, but difficult. What we have right now when it comes to privacy is, almost literally, nothing. So almost any gesture in that direction would be welcomed by me, and this particular law is not as cataclysmic as you all are seeming to suggest. (Though, granted, it all comes down to how it's enforced.)
Oh for fuck's sake. I wrote a whole reply here and then misclicked on the cancel button. I'm not going to write that again.
The short: your tautology is a gross oversimplification. Bad legislation may be bad legislation, but it can none the less produce positive effects.
Yeah, maybe it could, if we're lucky and everything works out just right.
Still the general principle is, if you want to do good things, you start with good methodologies executed with good tools. By starting with bad legislation, you are beginning in the negative and have that much more ground to gain. This isn't a good strategy at all.
In all those words, you've said precisely nothing of meaning that mounts any defense against the fact that free speech is a cornerstone of a free society. Not surprising, since it's difficult to argue against the truth with anything but lies or misdirection.
Oooops! There goes that loony-lefty conspiracy theory, just like all of their other baseless attack angles.
I'm not trying to suggest that being recorded is what makes the label of "speech" questionable, I'm trying to suggest that not being current is what does that. Particularly when it comes to free speech - the point of free speech is to allow for political dissent, and while those Roman diatribes were political speech at the time, they're now reference material.
Maybe I can clarify what I'm trying to get at here. Let's say that you're talking in a forum and someone says something that you don't like. You start to write your own diatribe in response but at some point you realize that everything you're trying to say has already been said by Marcus Aurelius. So, feeling good about yourself for being so smart, you delete what you wrote and instead just quote him. You contribute none of your own words to your forum post, it is just a quote. Who is speaking, in this situation?
What I'm saying is that in this situation you are the one who is speaking, the only one who is speaking, even though none of the words are yours. Speech, at least in the context of free speech, is about communication in the present day, and if by quoting someone else you are communicating your thoughts then you are speaking and the person who you are quoting is (probably) not. (Exception if you're just regurgitating what someone else said, without believing or understanding it. Then they are communicating through you.)
So this is what I mean by the difference between speech and history, even though you could probably come up with a better name for old speech than just "history." It's important to keep in mind what we're protecting and why when we talk about free speech though, it's specifically political speech. It's not free expression. We have laws against obscenity and some forms of hate speech and rules against swearing on air and so on.
Gone are the days of:
The Illiberal Left's War on Speech continues and we've almost lost it... Major positions have been surrendered without or with little fight:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Ugh, did that make any sense? I'm tired, I think I'm just rambling at this point. Does this law even apply to the source material anyway? It seems to be specific to search engines.
The law would not only apply to search engines. It would apply to everybody. In this respect, at least, it is more honest than the EU RTBF stuff.
I'm trying to suggest that not being current is what does that.
Yes, I understand. But I don't understand why you would think that. The idea that speech has some sort of expiration date past which it is no longer speech is a concept that I am having a seriously hard time wrapping my head around. I do know that there is no legal support for such a position.
By the way, political speech is considered the most protected, but it is not the only protected speech. All speech, outside of a small number of very specific exceptions, is protected free speech. It doesn't matter how important, relevant or old it is, or even if it was in any way sensical.
the gist is that when you're starting from nothing it is hard to go down. Possible maybe, but difficult.
It may be hard to go down from zero, but it's pretty easy to drag others down to zero with you.
What we have right now when it comes to privacy is, almost literally, nothing.
You won't find many privacy advocates more earnest than me, but, while privacy protections are absolutely lacking, it is not true that they are almost literally nothing. Also, privacy interests have to be balanced against other, equally important interests. A law like this does no such thing. And, in exchange for its "bulldozer" approach, it offers almost no actual privacy protection. So we end up with a law that has significant downsides in the form of infringing on people's rights and getting little upside from it.
Then it's good that it is politicians in NY that are doing this rather than some in the South.
He's an interesting big of information.
What conspiracy theory?
This is about open and admitted support.
Oh and Paul Manaforte to prison. Sucks to be a traitor.
This isn't going to last 5 minutes in the courts. Its just plainly obvious that its unconstitutional. I'm baffled that the people who are supposed to know this stuff , the legislators, keep screwing this up.
This isn't a left wing or right wing thing. Its just a straight up retarded thing.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Do not for a moment believe this is "badly thought out". This is deliberately constructed; a big fat club with "decency" written in rusty nails along the top.
Vague wording such as this means that anything a politician or industry-leader dislikes is guilty breaching this new bill, while anything they do will be mysteriously just-within-the-lines, even when far more inaccurate and excessive.
Don't ever think this ever would be used to protect us from lies, damned lies, politics and marketing models.
So has sufficient time passed that King's "I have a dream" speech should be erased from history? Plato? What is the cutoff date for "white" washing history?
Don't say this won't happen! In Nova Scotia, there was outrage when a teenage girl, Rehtaeh Parsons, took her own life because of intimate photos that were shared on the Internet without her permission. These poor girls needed to be protected from the Evil Intarwebs! So the politicians reacted and came up with a Anti-Cyberbullying law ("Cyber-Safety Act").
Guess what poor little teenager's case was the first tried in court...
...are you still there? Right. It wasn't a teenage girl but some native band leader (counts as a politician) that complained someone had posted "abusive, obscene and defamatory comments about her and her family" on facebook.
Later on, it was decided the law was -in US terms- "unconstitutional" and was struck down. So yeah, expect specialized firms working on behalf of politicians, executives, celebrities, and the like to scour the internet for anything unflattering and using bills like these to get them removed and, more importantly and frightingly, erased from history.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Is does this rule apply to the State of New York AND the US government as well. Can't I demand that THEY forget Me?
That should take care of Paul Bunyan and his Blue OX, Babe.
"inaccurate," "irrelevant," "inadequate" or "excessive"
I don't for one second believe the rumors that Mayor DeBlasio has sex with squids.
Purely politics. This is the US not Europe, the freedom of speech is practically 'absolute', unless information is clearly defamatory or liable no US law can stop someone from posting practically anything & leaving it in place for ever. This doesn't pass the 'smell test' & is purely a political game & waste of time.
Basically it demonstrates that the people elected to run the government have NO clue or just want to ignore the constitution entirely. Luckily the US has a Supreme Court that even with liberal judges wouldn't let this get by.
Complete & utter joke. It's not April 1st is it?
Seriously? This is the equivalent of 'book burning', attempting to get rid of 'unpopular information' based on the sentiments of the 'current time'. How long is a 'significant lapse it time'? 1 month, 1 year, 10 years,100 years, 1000 years? We already have laws that govern clearly untrue & defamatory statements (libel/slander) & ways to mitigate the harm via the courts. A law like this so broadly written as 0 value and is simply an attempt to restrict free speech to those things someone in power believes should be said/written. This has 0 basis for even being proposed, an absolute waste of time & a demonstration that elected officials don't believe in the constitution which is the basis for one of the most free societies ever created. I try to be as open to the 'grey areas' as I can but this isn't 'grey', this is 'black & white'. If you can't be taken to court over a statement you make today, then making it illegal to have that same statement remain around as long as I choose to have it posted is simply an attempt to restrict my freedom of speech...these elected officials can go piss up a rope.
Ok. Let's try this on for size:
1) Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety - Benjamin Franklin
2) You can have freedom or security, never count on having both at once - me, perhaps someone else where I may have read it.
The point being is that item 1) is an actual quote from around 1775, the thought inherent in it, though taken out of context of the letter in which it is written can be used by me or others to form other thoughts that are similar. Does this mean that item 2 should be deleted from all of history at some time in the future because BJ said it better?
Simply put, its not up to you or a legislature to decide for society what thoughts are 'current' and of 'current value'. It's up to the individuals in society to decide for themselves what information is relevant 'today', removing access to that information is simply a way to homogenize thought, removing speech 'unpopular today'...in a previous time it was called book burning. We don't 'cotton' to that around here thanks very much.
It's important to see both sides of the issue. Yes, this law would almost certainly violate the first amendment. Yes, it could easily be abused. But it's also a sincere attempt at fixing a real problem.
Someone falsely accuses you of some terrible crime. Maybe you have a bad breakup and your ex decides to get revenge by accusing you of child abuse or theft or something like that. It gets reported in the local news. The accusations are totally false, the police figure that out really quickly, and all charges get dropped. But still, if anyone googles your name, the top hits are all news stories about you being accused of something terrible. It's ruining your life. When you apply for jobs they first seem really interested, and then suddenly tell you to go away, and you know exactly why. There's nothing you can do about it.
It's easy to criticize this bill as a badly thought out idea—which it is. But it's still a real problem. So anyone who criticizes this needs to be able to answer, what should we do instead? "Ignore the problem and pretend it doesn't exist" isn't an answer. It's a real problem and it's hurting real people. So what should we do about it?
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Well, first of all, that language is too definitive. I was being more careful in my previous posts, but arguments always seem to lead to more extreme positions than originally intended. I should have said something like, "I'm trying to suggest that not being current could do that." - I was trying to point out that what speech is, and what free speech protects, is more complicated than the parent poster was suggesting, not that I knew exactly what those things were. No one knows exactly what those things are.
For the rest: Maybe i should ask what it is which you think makes those Roman diatribes speech in the present day? Speech isn't a solo affair, after all, it needs an audience and everyone at whom those diatribes were directed is gone. Someone now can read these things, and possibly be interested, but they are not the subject of the communication, they are an outside observer.
The other aspect is: even if this is speech, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that it's constitutionally protected. You brush aside the exceptions to free speech, but they certainly aren't "very specific" (pornography is whatever Justice Stewart says it is?) and non-political speech has been inconsistently protected by the courts. Under an originalist interpretation of the constitution I don't think it would be crazy to suggest that it isn't protected by the constitution at all. Though I haven't read the Federalist Papers, maybe there's someone in there expounding on the virtues of free expression.
None of this says that free expression isn't protected, just that perhaps it isn't protected by the constitution.
In a bill aimed at securing a "right to be forgotten," introduced by Assemblyman David I. Weprin and (as Senate Bill 4561 by state Sen. Tony Avella), New York politicians would require people to remove "inaccurate," "irrelevant," "inadequate" or "excessive" statements about others... Failure to comply would make the search engines or speakers liable for, at least, statutory damages of $250/day plus attorney fees.
Let me guess, there are no penalties for issuing a false take down demand.
And who decides what is inaccurate or irrelevant? We don't need a 'department of truth' (people just need to stop being so lazy and pathetic. Really, we have gotten precisely what most of us had coming), and I personally will fight it to my dying breath. Fuck that.
Which may be one reason so many people get here to write and even protect their pseudonyms and nicknames, or use their names. It would be much better to leave it as it is: one individual vs another individual on case by case as a civil matter. Why? Because it can become asymmetric, confusing and abused! See that whoever CANNOT write can bring down anyone who does write and force erasure? Which cannot be done with books that directly, incidentally. And people do get confused and self imply! See that eventually all themes stop being of public interest because the public lost interest and would say so even if it IS public interest. I would see suspicious whoever want someone else to erase something about them, unless of course it is a blatant lie. Or they cannot live with a polemic?
an officially sanctioned "Protect Our Allies, Smear Our Enemies" system.
because everything derogatory to enemies will be "public interest" forever, while anything damaging about allies will be "old news" and purged as soon as possible