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Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

bbc.com

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Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#281

Post by ythn »

ben_jones wrote: post #276
ythn wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems like Yet Another Barrier To Entry For Tech Startups (TM). I remember the good old days (re: 10 years ago) when you could make all sorts of cool things without being bogged down by regulations. I guess that era is over (at least for certain categories of tech like search engines). Also, your right to be forgotten seems to be infringing on my right to remember.

Are you serious or do you yearn for the days when cars didn't have seat belts and paint still contained lead? Start-ups will adapt or they don't deserve to exist.

I'm not saying all regulation is bad. But some regulation is has a major stifling effect on innovation and startups simply because the cost of compliance is too high for new players (but manageable for established big boys).

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#282

Post by zeveb »

onion2k wrote: post #14
zeveb wrote: post #2

Note that this case involved a criminal who wished to expunge his conviction from search results. > ‘The right to be forgotten is meant to apply to information that is no longer relevant but disproportionately impacts a person,’ said Jim Killock, executive director, ‘The Court will have to balance the public’s right to access the historical record, the precise impacts on the person, and the public interest.’ ‘The pub…

It seems to me that there is an absolute right to access factual historical information. This isn't a comment about the case, or the right to be forgotten, but something quite important nonetheless - Google's search results are not " factual historical information ". They're an index of webpages that anyone and everyone can create, saying whatever they like. Google claims their engine ranks pages that more reputable…

> Google's search results are not "factual historical information". They're an index of webpages that anyone and everyone can create, saying whatever they like.

I'd argue that the fact that a webpage says something is itself an historical fact, and shouldn't be forbidden to be said.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#283

Post by mrtksn »

21 wrote: post #266
mrtksn wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What risk? It's just easy to pass and assume that those who don't have News articles about are lower risk. Not all crimes are reported on the News as it's for-profit entertainment business that needs to pick the most shocking/entertaining incidents and portray those in a way that more people share it.

Bayesian statistics, there are different priors. The probability of a convicted person to do something criminal again is not the same as the risk of an random unconvicted person, just like the risk of a flood reoccurring in a previously flooded area: > According to an April 2011 report by the Pew Center on the States, the average national recidivism rate for released prisoners is 43%.[2] > According to the National I…

It's not that simple.

Some ridiculous percentage of startups fail, yet not all startups have the same risk of failure.

That's also why it's not a good idea to dismiss a candidate on a single criterion unless you're randomly hiring.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#284

Post by equalunique »

quanticle wrote: post #250
danShumway wrote: post #94

This is kind of a trend I've been noticing, where Europe will try to fix a valid technological problem, but pick the most problematic or poorly implemented solution to do it. It's not clear to me what the difference is between a government censoring someone directly and a government making it impossible for anyone to find a piece of information. Right to Be Forgotten only works if it becomes prohibitively expensive f…

It's not clear to me why this problem couldn't be solved more elegantly by creating anti-discrimination laws around criminal records. Because anti-discrimination laws around criminal records will work about as well as anti-discrimination laws regarding all the other protected classes (race, gender, age, etc.). Companies will very quickly figure out how to work around them, and will find ways to reject candidates for…

>What will probably happen is that companies will move the background check step ahead of the interview step.

The cost of doing interviews to screen candidates is much lower than background checks. Why would a company want to do that step first?

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#285

Post by marcosdumay »

jasode wrote: post #35
Elessar wrote: post #8

We're rapidly moving to a point where an official (government) criminal record is not important to folks you want to interact with -- landlords, employers etc. They will instead turn to Google. As such, Google might as well be the official record for many people. And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google's pagerank is doing them a disservice. I don't know…

>As a society, we approve of jail being the mechanism to "forgive" a person's crime. That's not really true. Serving prison time is neither a way to "forgive" nor a way to "pay debt back to society" . Those are just common phrases some people use. If felons were truly forgiven , they would have their right to vote restored. They wouldn't be denied a passport to travel abroad or denied a firearms license. Convicted fe…

The only country that I have ever heard about that does not forgive people's crimes after they serve jail time is the US.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#286

Post by jasode »

hahainternet wrote: post #260
jasode wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Permanent records are hugely damaging for persons livelihood in these cases. I agree and I'm not debating the harm that can be done. (My comment got many downvotes so I assume they think I believe felons should never be given a 2nd chance.) No, my comment is specifically about the framework for arguing . I'm saying that phrases such as "forgive" and "pay debt to society" are unconvincing since society has never univ…

> why do they have a sex offender registry? We have a Violent and Sex Offender Register: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_and_Sex_Offender_Regis... It is not public, it exists to facilitate Police intelligence.

>It is not public, it exists to facilitate Police intelligence.

The "police intelligence" gives a misleading impression. Non-police residents can inquire about felons on the list because of Sarah's Law.[1]

In other words... "If I molested a child and served my 10 year prison sentence, I'm not truly _forgiven_ if people can check if I'm on a sex offender registry."

Therefore, don't use "forgive" as the framework. It should be clear that society really doesn't forgive and allow people a clean slate. If serving jail truly meant the "debt was paid to society", felons wouldn't be put on that list after jail was completed. Many defendents refuse a plea bargain of "guilty" because they don't want to be put on that list. To them, the lifetime sex offender list is worse than the jail sentence. It's an ongoing debt that's never repaid.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/find-out-if-a-person-has-a-recor...

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#287

Post by cromwellian »

I have a feeling one day public titles, marriage, and criminal records will be in a blockchain ledger, and it'll be impossible for government to order them expunged. The way the governments are handling this is trying to impose secrecy with security through obscurity. But the public records exist somewhere, and anyone wanting to do a background check will eventually be able to track it down.

Imagine this case was instead about a Wikipedia article about this guy, and Wikipedia lost the case and was ordered to revert the article and expunge all edit history. Due to the way Wikipedia is cloned by many sources, and preserved by many archives around the world, it will become increasingly problematic to erase information.

If the government can go around ordering archives to expunge truthful public or historical records, it's very problematic IMHO. The notion of truth and objective reality is already under assault since the 2016 election, and the deep fakery and trolling bots will only get worse. What few institutions we have online that can try to weed out and present consensus truth would then be suspect if governments gain global jurisdiction to make edits.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#289

Post by merb »

wumpus wrote: post #179
danShumway wrote: post #94

This is kind of a trend I've been noticing, where Europe will try to fix a valid technological problem, but pick the most problematic or poorly implemented solution to do it. It's not clear to me what the difference is between a government censoring someone directly and a government making it impossible for anyone to find a piece of information. Right to Be Forgotten only works if it becomes prohibitively expensive f…

There's one big difference, and it's Orwellian -- courts and politicians are claiming that removing something from a search engine isn't censorship.

well even if it is not. it's just so easy to just search another engine. it actually got easier to identify people who wanted to hide stuff.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#290

Post by TomMarius »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #134
TomMarius wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give me an example, please? I really can't think of a situation when a crime is so irrelevant that nobody cares (and thus the record isn't needed) and yet the record destroys lives (and that proves that people care, BTW) and thus must be deleted.

Low level dope fiend? Visiting a prostitute, or selling sex? I can think of a number of crimes, which are pretty much irrelevant for a character assessment.

These things shouldn't be considered a crime in the first place, and I asked for real examples. I won't turn down a candidate for my sw dev position because they used to be a prostitute.
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