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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.
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
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.
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
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!”
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
this would be cuomo, you know the guy who wants to out-hillary hillary? this isnt a republican or trump thing
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The 'attorney fees' part is the big money maker.
Have you ever looked into who makes up the bulk of the legislature?
Lawyers.
Go figure.
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.
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.
Where is your evidence? Citations, please.
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.
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.
Please cite Trumps campaign promise (not some offhanded thing he said once) about scrubbing "irrelevant or excessive" statements from the internet. Seems like most of his speeches would get scrubbed right off the bat.
Cracking down on print press, TV, radio and internet for demonstrably false statements (the sky is green) is a different thing and in general a good thing if we can do it. The press gets special privileges for the express purpose of passing information to the public. If the press gets it wrong, either on purpose or inadvertently, there should be serious consequences to them because an irresponsible press can devastate the nation. I have always liked the idea of no programming or commercials for a duration equal to the time they gave that topic for the last month with a PSA static message displayed that they were wrong and a text of the correction below that for TV. Something similar for radio, and for Newspapers, a full front page above the fold blank with the correction in 20 point font minimum half the page taken up by the correction.
However, that should apply only to the press (businesses run for the dissemination of information) not to individual citizens who can say whatever the hell they want up to the point of libel/slander. Booting politicians out of office for repeatedly lying to the public (either on TV or print/online) should get them sanctioned or kicked out after something like 3 strikes over less than 3 months.
Also, we have to be talking about demonstrable facts, not controversial topics. The sky is green/I was at X today when in reality I was at Y, that kind of thing. If you get into controversial topics like anthropogenic global warming, etc, those topics are not settled fact (regardless of how hard the environmental nuts stomp their feet or how loud they shout) and generally hotly debated.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
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.
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.
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.
Where is your evidence? Citations, please.
One of the things I'm going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we're certainly leading. I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We're going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they're totally protected.
-- Donald Trump, 2016-02-26
This may not be about "stacking the courts" but Trump's intentions regarding libel laws was stated clearly during the campaign.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.