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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

#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 detailing the exoneration, and now finds it very difficult to get a job or start new relationships. Or a business man who filled for bankruptcy 30 years ago who finds search engines return news reports of his bankruptcy as the first and only return on himself and thus makes finding business partners or credit near impossible.

These seem like people who need protection from a age when its far far too easy to get access to the historical public record, but removing a factually true report that is just two years old seems a bit extreme; without knowing the full context.

What the right to be forgotten should be is some kind of mechanism of adding friction back to the process of getting certain kinds of information when it is in the public interest that this information shouldn't be so easy to get at. It should not be about removing public records altogether. How you do that without inadvertently harming the public interest or allowing abuse seems like a pretty hard or impossible problem.

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

#15

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…

> removing a factually true report that is just two years old seems a bit extreme

It might also be the case that old articles (say, of 25+ years) should be put back into digital archives. In such a long time the persons involved are no longer affected, but the public interest might exist, for historical archival reasons. So there would be an "invisibility interval" from year 2.5 to year 25.

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

#16
post #7
post #5

Be sure to burn all the archived articles in libraries. We wouldn't want pesky expired history changing our minds. ... wait aren't online archives identical to hardcopy archives.... Silly me, they are totally different.

I'm not defending the ruling but speed of access does make a qualitative difference with genuine implications.

Didn't consider that. However I would suspect anyone that anyone searching for them would rely on 10 seconds on the internet and they would stomp around to other sources.

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

#17
Old newspapers don't (generally) disappear completely, they just get scarcer and harder to access. I would expect major newspapers to have complete microfilm/microfiche archives of their entire 20th century runs. I would think major libraries would, too. So getting access to a particular newspaper for an arbitrary date generally involves, worst case, a special trip to the offices of the newspaper or a library in the same city as it.

What would be needed to do something comparable for online papers? Keep them online, but de-list them from search engines? Take them offline, but keep them in offline storage at newspaper offices and libraries?

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

#18
post #4

We should just pass a new law called "The right to scrub your public image", which allows you to control how the public perceives you or your company online. If someone says something unflattering about you, you can force them to delete it. That's basically what all these European "privacy" laws are amounting to.

The EU's privacy laws are much broader than the "right to be forgotten" (which do not apply to public figures anyway, as Google has shown in the past).

When a disgruntled ex publishes a page saying you have a bunch of STDs[1], or a company crawls your social media info and starts using it to market some product without your conscent, and these are the first things your cutomers (and/or friends) see when they google you... you're happy takedown requests are a thing and there are laws to protect you.

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

#19
Current historians understand the past by, among many other things, reading old preserved documents including old news. Future historians are going to be real irritated if we get in the habit of purging "expired" news. Well maybe not, maybe if we purge it completely enough we won't even have historians in the future :-)

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

#20

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