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Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted

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Re: Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted

#31

Post by a_humean »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #27
a_humean wrote: post #11

This appears to be an overzealous extension of the right to be forgotten. The right to be forgotten is a debate worth having as there are individuals that may have historical public records that may be false or no longer in the public interest to be so widely available. E.g: Man falsely but not maliciously accused of rape or murder in press reports and later being exonerated in court without accompanying press report…

Totally agree - there should be some friction. I'd say this should put more pressure on search engines, but not on the content archives, so that potentially damaging information could be found only by precise search of the events in the specific period and location regarding the person of interest, not just by name. However, direct search in archive must remain unrestricted. Probably, there should be a legal mechanis…

It could be something as simple as you need to pay a fee for a search query in order to get hold of filtered results, but with no indication that there will be any extra results to find.

eg: Search 'John Smith Liverpool UK Murder' and you get nothing interesting and no indication that anything has been filtered. However there is an option that is always available no matter the query to buy this search query for say $1-$50. If you pay up you get the filtered results, which may happen to show that John Smith was once accused of murder many years ago. If you are an investigator, researcher, or journalist then there should be a flat single fee or free access to filtered results.

Re: Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted

#32

Post by hx87 »

a_humean wrote: post #26
hx87 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "right to be forgotten" should be replaced with the "right to not have old information considered", which is a much better compromise between the public interest and privacy. In your example, a person false accused of a crime wouldn't have the record expunged, but the record would be heavily tagged with notices that it was a false accusation, and it would be illegal to use that information in considering…

That's interesting and would help a bit, but its probably not going to help the man falsely accused of murder very much. In the relationship case its basically pretty much impossible to legislate norms of behaviour in any reasonable period of time (it would be multi-generational if possible at all). For the job applications we all know hiring managers discriminate even when its against the law due to either their exp…

I'm taking the long view of things, so I'm less interested in one particular man falsely accused of murder than falsely accused people in general. Multiple generations is indeed a reasonable period of time. Sure, social norms might change slowly, but that slow change is often the only way to fix the problem without breaking something else to an unacceptable extent.

That being said, there is role for legislation--for example, there is a lot of research into implicit and explicit biases in human minds, and there could be more public funding on how to reverse these biases, and implement them as a standard part of the curriculum in public schools.

Re: Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted

#33

Post by Retric »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #23

Counter View. I don't expect this to sit well with HN. Is everything to be a sentence for life? I, and the law in many places, don't think that's fair. Whilst I don't think 2.5 yrs is the right balance, I do think much reporting should expire to an archive. If a restaurant did something wrong 10 years ago, but clean since (that's in the context of the UK with regular, visible, standards checks), who cares about the o…

If we want something to be forgotten in X years we are better off blocking it being published. For example, I would argue that zero pre-conviction 'news' should be published about a defendant. It's directly counter to the idea of innocent until proven guilty.

ED: One option might be to automatically use a different name. If I stop using "Retric" all my HN posts are divorced from my name. Abstractly, hearing about a 9/11 survivor by name adds nothing vs some made up name. A random picture of someone drinking will be forgotten if it's not linked to your name. Companies often change names to get away from bad publicity.

Re: Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted

#34

Post by danso »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #23

Counter View. I don't expect this to sit well with HN. Is everything to be a sentence for life? I, and the law in many places, don't think that's fair. Whilst I don't think 2.5 yrs is the right balance, I do think much reporting should expire to an archive. If a restaurant did something wrong 10 years ago, but clean since (that's in the context of the UK with regular, visible, standards checks), who cares about the o…

It's a tough thing in some cases. When I was in college, it was very normal to print the names of students in the police blotter (e.g. "John Smith, sophomore in engineering, was booked on charges of public nudity on Friday"). The internet existed but Googling things was not a mainstream habit. Nowadays, I think many college blotters anonymize the names, and that feels right to me. We have a right to know what's on campus, but fucking up as a drunk college student shouldn't affect your post-college life.

But an expiry date, if I'm reading this right, of a few years? Many trial processes don't finish up by then. In my journalism class, I force the students to go on Lexis Nexis and find 10-20 articles in the past decade or older that have been written about whatever they're writing about. Primarily to make them realize that whatever they think is new is not new, and to challenge them to pursue a story that looks at the big picture.

Making it harder to find stories in the past only adds to the dumbification and self-absorption of society.

Re: Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted

#35

Post by Analemma_ »

hx87 wrote: post #20
a_humean wrote: post #11

This appears to be an overzealous extension of the right to be forgotten. The right to be forgotten is a debate worth having as there are individuals that may have historical public records that may be false or no longer in the public interest to be so widely available. E.g: Man falsely but not maliciously accused of rape or murder in press reports and later being exonerated in court without accompanying press report…

I think the "right to be forgotten" should be replaced with the "right to not have old information considered", which is a much better compromise between the public interest and privacy. In your example, a person false accused of a crime wouldn't have the record expunged, but the record would be heavily tagged with notices that it was a false accusation, and it would be illegal to use that information in considering…

Considering old information, whether it's relevant or not, is something human psychology does automatically and inexorably. So when you talk about a "right to not have old information considered", you might as well speak of your right to jump off a cliff and soar through the air instead of hitting the ground. These European laws are doing their best to account for the unfair tendencies of human nature, while your counter-proposal isn't really an improvement over the situation we had before.

> "... but the record would be heavily tagged with notices that it was a false accusation ..."

There's been some literature lately about people trusting their doctors/lawyers/etc. more when that person reveals that they have a conflict of interest. A similar backfire effect could well occur here.

> " ... it would be a severe breach of social norms to use that information turn him down for a relationship ..."

Oh good. Approximately when can we expect the social norms to change? And are you accounting for the fact that it may happen never?

Re: Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted

#36

Post by buro9 »

Retric wrote: post #33
anexprogrammer wrote: post #23

Counter View. I don't expect this to sit well with HN. Is everything to be a sentence for life? I, and the law in many places, don't think that's fair. Whilst I don't think 2.5 yrs is the right balance, I do think much reporting should expire to an archive. If a restaurant did something wrong 10 years ago, but clean since (that's in the context of the UK with regular, visible, standards checks), who cares about the o…

If we want something to be forgotten in X years we are better off blocking it being published. For example, I would argue that zero pre-conviction 'news' should be published about a defendant. It's directly counter to the idea of innocent until proven guilty. ED: One option might be to automatically use a different name. If I stop using "Retric" all my HN posts are divorced from my name. Abstractly, hearing about a 9…

My wife has the issue that she was the victim of a crime, and the news reported her in detail as the perp was underage and they couldn't publish his name.

The result, my wife has had work colleagues ask about it, and one implied that she may have done something wrong to invite trouble.

The victims and innocent in an incident can be affected by reportage too.

We're European, and she tried to exercise the Right to be Forgotten, but Google haven't responded and it remains there when her name is searched. Her career may be being impacted, by having been a victim of a crime. This occurred 5 years ago, and is still mentioned from time to time.

Re: Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted

#37

Post by nickff »

tehwalrus wrote: post #6

"Winston Smith works as a clerk in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite historical documents so they match the constantly changing current party line. This involves revising newspaper articles and doctoring photographs—mostly to remove "unpersons," people who have fallen foul of the party. Because of his proximity to the mechanics of rewriting history, Winston Smith nurses doub…

Thanks for posting this.

Many are also persistently pushing to change what is 'acceptable' vocabulary to change how people think, as Orwell described in the Newspeak appendix.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#The_Newsp...

Re: Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted

#38

Post by mcherm »

danso wrote: post #34
anexprogrammer wrote: post #23

Counter View. I don't expect this to sit well with HN. Is everything to be a sentence for life? I, and the law in many places, don't think that's fair. Whilst I don't think 2.5 yrs is the right balance, I do think much reporting should expire to an archive. If a restaurant did something wrong 10 years ago, but clean since (that's in the context of the UK with regular, visible, standards checks), who cares about the o…

It's a tough thing in some cases. When I was in college, it was very normal to print the names of students in the police blotter (e.g. "John Smith, sophomore in engineering, was booked on charges of public nudity on Friday"). The internet existed but Googling things was not a mainstream habit. Nowadays, I think many college blotters anonymize the names, and that feels right to me. We have a right to know what's on ca…

> Many trial processes don't finish up by then.

In this particular case the trial that was being reported on has not yet finished.

Re: Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted

#39

Post by a_humean »

peeters wrote: post #30
CaptSpify wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always kind of thought a better system would be one that lets you assume a new identity. This is a war that laws won't win. Data will get out, and once it's out, it's near impossible to get back. And people do make mistakes that shouldn't haunt them for the rest of their lives. A better system is one that lets you disassociate with that data.

A restaurant could do exactly that. If the negative publicity for something they did only a couple of years ago is too much for them, they could change their name in a heartbeat. Instead, what they want is to selectively groom what the internet "remembers" about them. Remove the bad, keep the good.

There is a local upmarket curry house near me that is quite good and has been around for nearly 5 years winning plenty of local awards for food and service, but on TripAdvisor about 1/5 of the reviews refer to a steak house that was at the same address before this curry house opened. They did not get good reviews and didn't pass health inspections. Even though the curry house changed the owner, name, management, waiting staff, chefs, food sourcing, decor, and menu the reviews are still tied to the address.

Fortunately their newer reviews are so glowing that they still get over 4 stars average and their front window is covered in plaques of their awards and their most recent 5/5 health inspection (in the UK its quite common for restaurants to flaunt their 4/5 or 5/5 health report on their front door as advertising - there is no legal requirement to show it except in the city of Hull where now almost every restaurant now has at least 4/5 rating as a consequence given the death sentence that a something below 3/5 represents).

Re: Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted

#40

Post by strathmeyer »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #23

Counter View. I don't expect this to sit well with HN. Is everything to be a sentence for life? I, and the law in many places, don't think that's fair. Whilst I don't think 2.5 yrs is the right balance, I do think much reporting should expire to an archive. If a restaurant did something wrong 10 years ago, but clean since (that's in the context of the UK with regular, visible, standards checks), who cares about the o…

Yes that's how the world works. We don't change the laws to suit those whose thoughts fight with reality.
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