The Right To Be Forgotten

Andrew Binstock All great points. I think the central argument comes down to a matter of what content can be taken down and removed taken on the basis of how important/flagrant it is.

As you wrote:

"'The right to forget appears to be an obligation to lie.' I don't buy this argument. First of all, it's most unclear what links can be taken down. Given the EU's long history of formulating detailed and extensive regulations, it's highly likely that they will publish guidelines developed after considerable input from the public and affected businesses. This has been their tradition for most of their history."

This is a key point. The guidelines developed after considerable input from the public and affected businesses is the central point in determining what can and what should not be taken down. Although this might lead to a "court of public" opinion basis for what should or shouldn't be forgotten, all the same, the rules and regulations have to come from somewhere.

It also should be noted I believe there should be a distinction in what can and can't be removed depending on if that person or business put it online in the first place. At this point in time, the Internet is known as the world wide public square. If you are willing to post something online, you inherently know you are joining the public square for debate in which anything and everything is game for consumption, distribution and record. I would be silly to think anything other concerning this post.

On the other hand, with content the person or business didn't post, there is more question to be had in terms of removing that content. If you don't give consent for your thoughts, ideas, doings to be blasted in the public square that is the Internet, do you have more leverage to have it removed on the grounds of that content being posted by a body other than your own? It's a good question which I think needs debating.

- Brad Yale
6/18/2014

Yes, exactly. This is the idiocy of the ruling. It's like ruling that you remove an item from the index but leave it in the book.
Now, I understand the court's logic here: Without the search, people just couldn't find the item. In the same way as seeing mugshots online is so different than having to physically go down to each courthouse and see if there is one. I get that, but all it will mean is that the handful of big search companies will remove links that other smaller ones leave and the problem remains.
Furthermore the ruling is too vague as to under which circumstances google have to abide by this. I haven't read enough to see if other companies are named but I assume so.

From what I have read ofthe process, the problem is the strange wa the Court is trying to give him privacy. The newspaper that has the info on it's website does not have to remove it, or even put a stop on searching it in the robots.txt file; but Google is supposed to not show it in searches. Clearly, the Court does not understand the internet.