[HN Gopher] Canadians have a 'right to be forgotten' on Google, ...
___________________________________________________________________
Canadians have a 'right to be forgotten' on Google, Federal Court
rules
Author : voisin
Score : 191 points
Date : 2023-09-30 12:45 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theglobeandmail.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theglobeandmail.com)
| flippertybit wrote:
| [flagged]
| smitty1e wrote:
| Citizen: "I was cancelled!"
|
| Government: "Apparently you've forgotten exercising your right to
| be forgotten. Fret not! We have remembered on your behalf. Some
| day you'll thank us. We're waiting."
| flippertybit01 wrote:
| [flagged]
| markhahn wrote:
| Search engines are factual; why should someone be allowed to
| override the facts?
|
| I'd be very happy if this were about correcting facts: about
| forcing the takedown of inaccurate content from websites. Google
| would then update its index to reflect the improved accuracy.
|
| Fix the problem, not hide it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Search engines are factual_
|
| Only in the sense that they index what other sites say, which
| might or might not be factual or honest.
| shitlord wrote:
| Search engines also curate nowadays. Search for something
| vaguely related to suicide, and the thing you're looking for
| will not appear among the first few search results.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > Search engines also curate ~~nowadays~~ _and always
| have_.
|
| It's impossible not to. Even merely putting one specific
| search result above another because it's "more relevant" is
| the very act of curation, because you are inherently
| defining "relevance."
| [deleted]
| wredue wrote:
| How do you "fix" a search engine creating top results for your
| accusation of a crime while burying the acquittal? Unless
| you're famous, your acquittal will basically never outrank your
| accusations in a search engine, and the accusations will follow
| you.
|
| Hence the ruling here.
| eropple wrote:
| "I would be much happier if we did a thing can only
| intermittently be accomplished by legal means and can be
| nullified at will by creating a new instance of a discardable
| entity, rather than doing a thing addressed to an identifiable
| and durable entity from which to request it."
| pasc1878 wrote:
| Unfortunately by the time you have found this lies about you
| will have spread to many sites often outside the courts
| jurisdiction. How do you get all those sites taken down?
|
| Thus you have to make the indexer stop indexing you.
| shitlord wrote:
| Do you really have to get those sites taken down if they're
| not indexed by any major search engines? Very few people will
| be able to find them.
| thfuran wrote:
| So in order to prevent hypothetical misinformation, it is
| imperative to maintain the right to demand that accurate
| information not be spread?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Nothing hypothetical about it, it's fairly common for even
| big news publishers like CNN to put out a headline that is
| so misleading that it's effectively a lie, and then either
| never follow up with a correction if the story turns out to
| be false or put out a much less publicized and still
| misleading "correction" such that the correction is buried
| in a few lines in the middle somewhere.
|
| If big publishers are doing this often on well known
| topics, it stands to reason that the much larger number of
| little publishers are also doing it with at least similar
| frequency for less well known topics.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| It is not hypothetical - there are cases in Europe where
| the first entry in google for a person is an accusation
| against them that was proved false
| [deleted]
| thfuran wrote:
| And the solution to that is to remove the factual
| information about them from search results?
| 3-cheese-sundae wrote:
| Yes, hence the existence of slander and libel laws.
| thfuran wrote:
| That's not at all how libel works, at least in the US.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| [dead]
| swader999 wrote:
| Hi Google, please forget me?
|
| Sure Dave, please wash your hands for a valid finger print and
| move in close so I can scan your retina. Closer Dave...
| [deleted]
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Reminds me of this:
| https://www.skeletonclaw.com/image/710734055173472257
| flippertybit01 wrote:
| [flagged]
| paxys wrote:
| Politicians pass a law saying Google must artificially suppress
| unflattering news about politicians, and the entire citizenry is
| cheering it on. Wild. Thank god for the first amendment.
| swader999 wrote:
| This is great Canada, now do the CRA please.
| voisin wrote:
| Expand?
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| This seems like a poor solution to the death of journalism.
|
| There aren't enough details to go on in the story, but I'm going
| to make an assumption that this person was charged with a crime,
| stories were written about the charges, but when the charges were
| dropped or he was acquitted there was no followup story written
| and no update made to the original story.
|
| Journalism in Canada is dying. Most of the newspapers in Canada
| are owned by one company and newsrooms have been consolidated and
| shrunk. I used to read my city's two major newspapers - they'd
| report a different subset of what was happening, and where they
| reported on the same thing the stories and takes would be
| different. Both were biased, but biased in different directions,
| so I felt that I was getting a semi-balanced view by reading
| both. Now both papers are owned by the same company, have the
| same reporters, same editors, report on the same things, and run
| identical stories. There's no balanced view and not enough
| reporters to follow up on every little thing that gets reported.
|
| Ideally searching for this person's name would show the newest
| stories first ("person acquitted of crime", "charges dropped",
| etc), but if those stories never get written they will never show
| up in a search engine. And very few people will dig into CanLII
| to find the outcome, if it even makes it far enough to get into
| CanLII.
|
| I don't know what the solution is. Maybe the media shouldn't name
| names until someone is convicted? But that would likely have
| unintended consequences.
| charles_f wrote:
| I'm getting my news from a couple journals of Glacier Media
| group, that gives me a pretty good idea of the best deals at
| Cambodian Tyre, and how many cats got strained during the last
| marmot festival.
| kranke155 wrote:
| In Europe this has been used by a lot of shady characters,
| including a drug dealing diplomatic visa buying individual in my
| country, to remove all mentions of whatever they can on Google.
| If I Google certain shady politicians and businessmen in my
| country vs DuckDuckGo the difference is stark.
| derefr wrote:
| I would think that the idea here is that courts aren't
| currently intentionally giving out "and everyone remembers what
| they did forever" as part of most criminal sentences; that this
| type of indefinite scarlet lettering even after serving out a
| sentence was never an intent of criminal sentencing, but only
| became one as a byproduct of the judicial process due to court
| cases being public for auditability + the Internet durably
| remembering and indexing everything forever; and that if courts
| want to _make_ an indefinite scarlet letter a part of (some)
| criminal sentences, then they should be doing so explicitly, as
| with "sex offender registries" and the like, so that that
| power can be applied only where democratically favored via
| legislation.
| godelski wrote:
| I think this comes down to failure modes. No system is going to
| be perfect (you'd need an infinite amount of resources) so you
| need to design failure methods into it. The same is true about
| laws. In fact, I'd say that this is a big reasons "laws are
| meant to be broken" because the ecosystem is always changing
| and intent and implementation don't always align. Sometimes
| laws that seem very good are incredibly stupid in certain
| situations. This is why we should never rule by the letter of
| the law alone. There's a famous philosopher who came up with
| the (namesake) "Blackstone's Ratio". In short "It is better
| that a ten guilty men go free than a innocent man be stricken
| of his freedom." Blackstone influenced many of the early
| founders for countries in the Americas.
|
| So we have to ask ourselves, is this a thing that is beneficial
| to normal people. Is their right to be forgotten and their
| privacy important? You know people will always abuse this
| system, but is it better existing than if it hadn't? You will
| __always__ be able to point to abusers with __any__ system, so
| the truth is pointing at abusers itself isn't an argument
| against something. It needs more context. If the system is only
| used by abusers, then this is a problem. But terrorists and
| pedos use encryption (the common fingers being pointed) but so
| do normal people and it is highly valuable to normal people and
| their daily lives. Idk if removing your identity from Google is
| as important as that, but we should make sure we include more
| context than saying "people abuse it." That's a statement that
| will always be true.
| voisin wrote:
| I would rather that right to be forgotten exist for that
| individual than not exist for anyone.
| Duwensatzaj wrote:
| So you want Google to lie about reality and punish people who
| state the truth.
|
| I honestly can't understand why.
| zajio1am wrote:
| 'Right to be forgotten' is kind of absurd law. If you did
| something notable that is mentioned by press, then by press
| webpages, then indexed by search engines, you could ask search
| engine to hide that information, despite the original information
| is still publicly available (at least in libraries archiving
| paper press).
| xoa wrote:
| A "right" to destroy other people's memories, and that it
| unironically goes under the shockingly Orwellian new speak "right
| to be forgotten", is one of the more horrifying recent things to
| see both spread and actually get embraced by so-called defenders
| of the people. There is no parallel in history. People absolutely
| can be naturally forgotten, but the principle that there is a
| _right_ to have others forget naturally leads down a very, very
| ugly path. What people think about us and remember about us is
| NOT our data, it 's theirs even if it's about us. If someone is
| spreading something factually and materially wrong there are
| already a myriad of tools to correct that.
|
| Edit: I think honesty and HN spirit compels me to steelman
| against my own argument as well. An argument can be made that
| there was a time when it was possible for someone willing to take
| some serious risk, cost, and effort to start anew from even a
| really bad past. Step back a century or two or earlier, and
| identities and persistent records could be pretty scattered.
| Somebody who did something pretty bad (but maybe not truly
| notorious) and served any time but was determined to reform could
| leave it all behind and travel a thousand miles away with a new
| name and build a new life (or die trying). The space for that has
| undoubtedly shrunken in some respects, and looks like it may
| continue to do so. I can accept that there can be reasonable
| differences of opinion on that.
|
| But against _that_ is what it means to force it to happen. What
| such powerful legal tools will do when, with total inevitability,
| they are most effectively wielded by the most powerful as such
| tools always are. The people who already face the least
| accountability in many ways also tend to be the ones most able to
| make use of anything that may give them even a colorable case
| against critics and detractors. Some people truly reform, but of
| course some do not. And of course there are the principles
| involved. Is this something to use _force_ over, because make no
| mistake, that 's what it means to make something a _right_ backed
| by law. That 's what the very nature of "law" is, it's formalized
| opinions backed by power. The push for this new "right" feels
| different and dangerous to me then mere basic privacy, or worries
| about _government_ (or even megacorp) surveillance.
| [deleted]
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Why not look what happened elsewhere where the right to be
| forgotten exists? Actual implementations might not turn out to
| be so dire.
| [deleted]
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| And do the "myriad tools" to combat disinformation stack up in
| this brave new era of LLMs dedicated to firehosing that
| disinformation far faster than you can combat it? Are you
| willing to put your reputation on the line to "steelman" your
| conviction? Do you get this worked up about simple link rot?
| officialchicken wrote:
| Despite the hand-wavy arguments and use of misinterpreted shock
| phrases like "Orwellian", a persons' memories (and biochemical
| retention mechanisms) are not the same as a computers. At a
| bare minimum, the former has a singular lifetime and there can
| only one instance - zero copies.
| xoa wrote:
| OK, so you're fine with being able to forcefully destroy
| people's diaries? Photographs? What about those with memory
| problems who depend on such external memories?
|
| > _the former has a singular lifetime and there can only one
| instance - zero copies._
|
| That's curious, I could have sworn humans had developed ways
| to share their memories with each other through things like
| "words" or "pictures"? Things proven to allow someone to
| share their memories with millions and pass them down such
| that we still know them even thousands of years later. So
| you're "only" talking about censoring/destroying
| conversation, phone calls, letters, messages, newspapers,
| paintings and such?
|
| There is no shock phrasing here, despite _you_ wanting to
| deflect. To forget is to lose memories. A _right_ to have
| _others_ forget necessarily implies actively forcing them to
| destroy their own memories. That 's what it means, stripped
| of the misdirection. It's evil. I'm not sold that "do it on a
| computer" always is a magic wand that means now it's fine to
| use government force with it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Honestly, your hyperbolic style of argument is extremely
| offputting. Maybe go touch some grass until the caffeine
| wears off.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > So you're "only" talking about censoring/destroying
| conversation, phone calls, letters, messages, newspapers,
| paintings and such?
|
| "Destroying a person's data" and "destroying Google's
| copies of that data" are two different things.
|
| It's quite possible that Aunt Sally could keep her
| conversations, poems, paintings, macaroni pictures, or what
| have you, without allowing Google to index those things or
| make its own copies.
| xoa wrote:
| > _" Destroying a person's data" and "destroying Google's
| copies of that data" are two different things._
|
| Why? How many people may they share copies with before
| it's no longer allowed in your opinion? What is your
| basis for calculating that?
|
| > _It 's quite possible that Aunt Sally could keep her
| conversations, poems, paintings, macaroni pictures, or
| what have you, without allowing Google to index those
| things or make its own copies._
|
| Of course she can choose not to allow Google to index
| those things or make its own copies, but why should she
| be forced not to? Or Google forced not to? What about her
| circle of friends, and how big can that circle be? What
| if she runs her own little blog, wiki, forum, newsgroup,
| or the like? What about if it's a newspaper, can they
| index it or make copies? A single journalist? Researcher?
| What does "newspaper", "journalist", or "researcher" even
| mean as a matter of law? Are only certain elites allowed
| now? And on and on.
|
| You shouldn't argue for a big new expansion of government
| force restricting information over and above defamation
| law without really being able to think all this through
| IMO. Details really matter. Imagine the absolute worst
| populist wannabe dictators at not merely national scale
| but at the local small town scale that doesn't get much
| attention but has real power to affect people's lives.
| What are _they_ going to do with this? Does it matter if
| they 'd lose a 6-figure lawsuit in the end if no one they
| would go after can afford to fight it? That's not a
| theoretical threat. Anti-SLAPP laws help a lot by making
| things much cheaper thanks to a fairly straight forward
| (under defamation law) low pass filter. A judge can
| determine pretty easily if there is a colorable case or
| not. As the linked article says, "right to be forgotten"
| is complex and case-by-case, ie, expensive. And we _know_
| that "expensive lawsuit" means "bullies will use this
| for illegitimate ends", so we should be very cautious
| about opening up mass applicable complex new forms of
| action without really thinking it through.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Why? How many people may they share copies with before
| it's no longer allowed in your opinion?
|
| Zero. Google is allowed to share zero copies.
|
| That's the whole point, right?
|
| > but why should she be forced not to?
|
| She isn't "forced not to". Google is forced not to.
|
| I'm not sure why you can't see the difference here.
|
| > What about her circle of friends, and how big can that
| circle be?
|
| Google isn't "her circle of friends".
|
| > What if she runs her own little blog, wiki, forum,
| newsgroup, or the like?
|
| Google isn't allowed to index it. And?
| Agrue8u wrote:
| >> What if she runs her own little blog, wiki, forum,
| newsgroup, or the like?
|
| >Google isn't allowed to index it.
|
| I assume you mean Google can't index the forbidden names
| on her blog. Or is her entire blog now unfindable because
| she included a forbidden name? How does Google know if
| the name, of which multiple named people may exist, is
| the forbidden one? What of the rights of samed named
| people to be found?
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| That's Google's problem.
|
| Note that they already have a well-established takedown
| mechanism for copyright violations.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > She isn't "forced not to". Google is forced not to.
|
| > I'm not sure why you can't see the difference here.
|
| Indeed. This is a poor analogy, but it seems kind of like
| the difference between
|
| 1. Aunt Becky is allowed to keep a diary with lies about
| you
|
| 2. Aunt Becky is allowed to show those lies about you to
| Susan
|
| 3. Aunt Becky is allowed to take out a newspaper add
| sharing those lies about you, in every newspaper in the
| world, for the rest of time
|
| There's a gap between 1 and 2 where you can make an
| argument. There's a HUGE gap between 2 and 3.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > There's a HUGE gap between 2 and 3.
|
| Definitely. With 1 or 2, the lies aren't in a searchable
| database accessible to (e.g.) potential employers, or any
| rando stalker with an internet connection. That's a
| _very_ important difference.
| PixyMisa wrote:
| There's this thing - it's pretty new, you might not have
| heard about it - called "writing".
| pfdietz wrote:
| The First Amendment is a fundamental of US society. It was the
| source of two of the "Four Freedoms" during WW2.
|
| Countries that infringe on the First Amendment rights of
| Americans are properly termed "enemies". Countries that are
| currently under the US nuclear umbrella should understand the
| cost of that protection.
| AJ007 wrote:
| One of the challenges on HN is that the United States pretty
| much singularly has a very strong right to free speech as a
| part of law. The right to be forgotten is a very direct an
| unarguable violation of this. It isn't even debatable, and thus
| we are left debating free speech issues of which Europeans and
| Americans have very strong differences (in my opinion, anyone
| who is under an authoritarian government doesn't get to
| participate in the debate for censorship.)
|
| I don't know what is worse - that, for example, a Norweigen
| neo-Nazi mass murderer who will only serve 20 years in prison
| could erase the stories about them and that event ever
| occuring, or that someone who did something really dumb in
| college could usurp and override everyone else's right to free
| speech.
|
| The right to be forgotten rests on the premise that someone can
| be "reformed" and that their right to erase the past outweighs
| the rights of everyone else. The basic premise is someone did
| something really bad or embarrassing and they are too lazy to
| change their name (I have friends who have done that, due to an
| embarrassing newspaper article appearing Google.)
|
| I think we are headed toward a bifurcated interest. The reason
| that countries outside of the US have been able to compel
| American tech companies to do their bidding, to date, is
| because these companies are monopolies that generate massive
| amounts of cashflow doing things which are not impacted by that
| law (right to be forgotten does almost 0 to Google's income.)
|
| How is this going to work with LLM models? Keyword censorship
| can be inserted at the input and output levels, but you can
| make the LLM bypass that. These models will not be re-trained
| on demand. The open models can not be recalled. I suspect a lot
| of countries are about to be excluded from the next wave of
| innovation.
| charles_f wrote:
| > there is a right to have others forget
|
| This is different from what the article (and ruling) are
| talking about. This is not about going in people's memory and
| deleting them, neurolizer style. It's not even talking to get
| the page down. It's talking about stopping to smear that
| person's name by advertising the publication.
|
| > There is no parallel in history
|
| Yes there is. If someone smears your name on billboards you're
| allowed to sue. Yesterday I read a story of a comedian who was
| getting YouTube videos about his plagiarism taken down. If you
| are publish stuff about a corporation that is bad for them, you
| might be sued to take it down. Plenty of examples.
| xoa wrote:
| > _If someone smears your name on billboards you 're allowed
| to sue_
|
| Sure, but you're not going to get anywhere with your suit
| unless it's defamation. "Smearing" your name with something
| you actually did is (and or should be) protected speech. The
| article does not describe the confidential plaintiff winning
| a defamation lawsuit and forcing the material to be taken
| down from its source. And there would need to be no new
| "right to be forgotten" for that, that's just bog standard
| century old defamation law. All search engines and regular
| sites for that matter, anything that hosts 3rd party
| generated content, has (and is required to have by law)
| contacts and processes in place for taking down actual
| illegal material. The entire debate around this new thing is
| getting stuff you merely don't like but is entirely true
| hidden away.
|
| > _Yesterday I read a story of a comedian who was getting
| YouTube videos about his plagiarism taken down_
|
| Which sounds like horrible to me and exactly the problem! If
| he plagiarized, why should he be able to get those videos
| taken down?
| dmbche wrote:
| Feel free to chat with a lawyer, but truth can be
| defamatory, it's in the intent (or carelessness) to cause
| harm to another that it's decided to be defamation or not.
| xoa wrote:
| > _Feel free to chat with a lawyer, but truth can be
| defamatory_
|
| Not in the US it can't, truth is an absolute defense
| against defamation. And while sure, absolutely lots of
| countries don't respect free speech or support robust
| criticism very well, but I think those that don't are
| wrong. Hence why I included "(and or should be)", the
| ones that don't still should IMO.
| noonething wrote:
| Privacy is ingrained into Canada's laws and can't be changed
| willy-nilly. It'll be interesting to see how we deal with it and
| the 'blabbermouth' nature of tech.
| Crontab wrote:
| More like the right to suppress history.
| vnchr wrote:
| [flagged]
| Etheryte wrote:
| An alternative, much simpler explanation is that people
| downvote comments which they don't think are fitting for HN or
| don't provoke good discussion. I don't care about the ruling,
| but I do think some of the comments here are more fitting for
| Reddit than HN. In general though, I don't get taking issue
| with comment votes, it's just random internet points on a
| screen.
| randomdata wrote:
| I'm not sure that stands up. 'Votes' are always positive
| feedback to the one on the receiving end. Assuming HN (or
| Reddit, or whatever) successfully filters bot activity, they
| provide indication that there are people in the vicinity of
| the comment and therefore it is likely that the comment is
| being read. Which is the reason why one comes to a forum and
| not to a private journal. As there is no formal analytics
| system, getting feedback (button presses, replies, etc.) is
| the only way to know you are contributing something that a
| larger community is taking in. And such feedback is what
| encourages contributing more.
|
| If there was something that the community doesn't like,
| naturally they would hide the fact that a community exist. No
| votes, no replies, no nothing. When one feels like they are
| simply writing in a private journal, they will grow bored of
| their activity pretty quickly. As the old adage goes: Don't
| feed the trolls.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| > In general though, I don't get taking issue with comment
| votes, it's just random internet points on a screen.
|
| Most of the time, I want to be able to easily read each and
| every comment that was posted, regardless of what some other
| random people may think about those comments.
|
| I find it annoying how the votes and flagging can affect the
| appearance/visibility of a comment here.
|
| Downvoted comments are rendered in dimmer text, which makes
| the comments harder to read.
|
| I also have to log in so the "showdead" setting takes effect,
| just so I can see comments that were flagged and hidden.
|
| I wish I could use this site with all of the
| voting/flagging/content-hiding "functionality" disabled,
| ideally without having to log in and otherwise overriding the
| default behaviour.
| [deleted]
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| I've been trying to follow this case, and I'd love for someone
| with actual legal background to correct me if I'm wrong. But as
| far I can tell from reading the rulings and PIPEDA is that
| technically all the courts have said so far is that commercial
| search engines are not blanket exempt from PIPEDA, and that they
| are not exempt from PIPEDA in the context of the original
| complaint (the actual guy complaining that his name is giving
| untrue and damaging results on google).
|
| Google has been trying to argue that the Privacy Commissioner
| needs to consider charter implications of PIPEDA applying (and
| allowing right to be forgotten), while the Commissioner and the
| courts have been stating that they will first rule on if google
| search engine results are in scope of PIPEDA before considering
| if delisting would unduly limit Charter rights.
|
| Finally, as I understand it, PIPEDA effectively grants the
| Privacy Commissioner investigatory powers, and that enforcement
| and remedies are supposed to be enforced by courts (ie, another
| lawsuit). That said, the Privacy Commissioner has published a
| draft position on online reputation that says it does believe
| that delisting/deindexing can sometimes be an appropriate remedy,
| so the obvious follow up steps would be the Privacy
| Comissioner/original complaint proceeding.
|
| In other words, even if Google fails to win an appeal on this set
| of rulings, there will almost certainly be another round of court
| cases on if delisting ("right to be forgotten") is actually
| Charter compliant.
| tamimio wrote:
| I can't read the article it's paywalled, but what if this used to
| cancel someone and erase all their information as if they never
| existed in the internet? Just because of wrong thinking?
| omwow wrote:
| https://archive.ph/hQCDZ
| brap wrote:
| This is definitely going to be used in ways legislators
| haven't(?) intended.
| paxys wrote:
| Legislators intend to use it to remove incriminating news about
| themselves during the election cycle.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Canada gets removed from Google Maps.
| Sunspark wrote:
| If someone has the same name as someone who committed an offence
| that's a problem right?
|
| This permanent memory doesn't extend to yourself only, it covers
| OTHER PEOPLE who have the same name as you. You are with them,
| for better or worse.
|
| I could see it being necessary for some people to have to
| literally change their name just so they wouldn't be the same
| search result as the other person.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Perhaps it's worth noting the following in the article (before
| rushing to comment here based on the title alone):
|
| "The case began with a complaint to the federal Privacy
| Commissioner in 2017 from a man whose name and details are kept
| confidential in the ruling. The man said outdated and inaccurate
| information about him in newspaper articles found on the internet
| was leading to great personal harm, including physical assault,
| employment discrimination, severe social stigma and persistent
| fear. He wanted the information to be delisted - made
| unsearchable, unless someone knew the website urls featuring his
| name."
| [deleted]
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| While targeting search may be more expedient, I would expect
| the proper target to be the publisher or maintainer of the
| inaccurate newspaper articles. If articles make false claims,
| that can fall under defamation. A reasonable newspaper will
| include corrections (preferably inline).
| spookie wrote:
| Quite understandable.
| eli wrote:
| It really depends. Some people would consider it "outdated
| and inaccurate" to report they were arrested for some crime -
| even if that's true. Should such articles be scrubbed from
| Google if they are causing harm? Removed from newspaper
| archives too?
| bonoboTP wrote:
| This is why in most of Europe, full names are not printed
| in the press, the last name is abbreviated, and photos are
| blurred.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Until conviction.
| graypegg wrote:
| In my own opinion, if you're arrested, have paid the
| standard debt to society that we all (in theory) have
| agreed on, and gone back into society seeking a job...
| forcing people to constantly deal with their old (non
| violent) crimes seems like extra-judicial punishment for
| very little benefit.
|
| Even worse to leave that punishment to a private company.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| You would've had Epstein's history erased after his first
| stint in jail
| eli wrote:
| Hmm so is that just crimes or anyone can get anything bad
| they've done removed from the internet?
| graypegg wrote:
| GP comment was about specifically information about
| crimes. Not sure what precedence is set by the decision
| mentioned in the article.
| eli wrote:
| Just seems awfully hard to draw a line.
|
| So if the victim of the crime published an essay about
| what happened, are they allowed to tell their own story
| and have it listed in Google?
|
| What if it's a story about conduct that could be criminal
| but for which you were never charged?
| twoodfin wrote:
| Fortunately, in the US it's fairly easy to draw a line:
| There's no First Amendment exception for "I'd rather you
| didn't remind people of that."
| eli wrote:
| I wouldn't be so certain of how the first amendment
| applies to tech platforms (esp as interpreted by current
| SCOTUS)
|
| This case could go either way
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/scotus-to-
| review...
| Vvector wrote:
| Where do you draw the line?
|
| My SIL, divorced with a young daughter, started dating a
| man. My wife (her sister) googled him and discovered he
| was a convicted child molester.
|
| What if I was hiring an accountant? Should I be able to
| google him and find out he had been convicted of
| embezzlement?
| djbusby wrote:
| The line is surely at "inaccurate" which is mentioned up-
| thread and in the case. Neither of your scenarios
| describe an inaccurate datum, just old (but not outdated)
| eli wrote:
| Hmm is this really about "privacy" then? Seems like
| privacy would mostly be about things that are accurate.
| We already have laws about libel and defamation.
|
| Who decides what's inaccurate or outdated? I think the
| subject of a negative article may often feel it's
| inaccurate even if it's generally correct.
| graypegg wrote:
| Yeah, I feel you. Clearly in that case, she dodged a
| bullet.
|
| But you hear about people having to explain drug
| possession charges, or even robbery charges from their
| past when they were a different person. We pretend like
| we actually want the judicial system to at least
| sometimes "fix" people but we make it next to impossible
| to do that. We assign a "price" to pay back to society,
| and the whole point is that price is supposed to be
| concrete and understandable.
|
| The line is hard to draw between crimes where "society
| agrees you've ruined your life" (child molestation) and
| "society wants you to get better". (drug possession, I
| hope?)
|
| Maybe I'm more so vouching for "public awareness" to be a
| part of the sentencing procedure? (Allowing crimes
| without that punishment minimum to be forgotten on public
| platforms like Google.)
|
| We already have laws/precedence that make the distinction
| between degrees of homicide for example. So the fuzzy
| line problem is already kind of solved in that sense?
| We've being doing that sort of difficult sorting for
| other punishments for many centuries. We just assume that
| EVERY crime is worth remembering at the moment.
| [deleted]
| Teever wrote:
| Do you think a world where it is illegal for a victim to
| tell other people that someone victimized them is a just
| world?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _if you're arrested, have paid the standard debt to
| society [..]_
|
| It's a little careless to equate arrest with conviction.
| graypegg wrote:
| Sorry, you're right, that's the wrong word.
|
| I mean "tried and convicted".
| ben_w wrote:
| Even if the reason you're being physically assaulted is for
| a crime you did do, yes, information about this shouldn't
| still be easy to reach on the internet by your release from
| prison.
|
| Adding mob justice to the formal legal system doesn't make
| it better.
|
| > Removed from newspaper archives too?
|
| No, but most people don't look in the archives so that
| doesn't matter.
| eli wrote:
| How would you craft a law that applies to some search
| engines but not others? Market share?
| ben_w wrote:
| I assume from the question that you think I think
| newspapers archives means _online_ archives.
|
| I don't, they can be offline, just as they were prior to
| the internet.
|
| If you meant anything else: I wouldn't distinguish
| between any search engines, large or small... but I'm
| also not a lawyer or a lawmaker, so I have a paper-thin
| awareness of the consequences of my suggestion that even
| ChatGPT can probably poke holes in if only it weren't so
| sycophantic.
| theironhammer wrote:
| Arrested or convicted? Though to be arrested in many eyes
| means guilty.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| Instead of "some people" why not offer a real world example
| of this assertion.
| eli wrote:
| I'm so sure because I've worked for news websites and
| personally had this happen. I'd rather not antagonize
| them by linking the article. But in some cases we've
| added editor's notes or addendums to provide additional
| context or updates. We always correct factual errors. But
| I don't think we've ever taken an article down because
| someone didn't like it. Sorry you'll have to take my word
| for it.
|
| It's common enough though. Here's an old pointer article
| https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2010/5-ways-
| news-o... and there are tons of companies offering to
| help you get articles removed from Google.
| bashinator wrote:
| That would bring us back to parity with pre-Internet
| society, assuming said info could still be accessed through
| court and library archives.
| theptip wrote:
| Rather than speculate or reinvent from first principles, we
| could look at existing "right to be forgotten" laws like
| GDPR:
|
| https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/
|
| Not sure what the Canadian basis is, but in general these
| laws recognize that it's a tradeoff where the public has
| some interest in most information, and the individual may
| have an interest in it being forgotten. Criminal records
| would be a clear grey area where one could make the case
| for a public interest particularly in the short term, which
| is less strong over time. But inaccurate reporting is
| clearly much less eligible for the public interest.
|
| I think phrasing it as a right is perhaps sets the wrong
| framing, as it's quite conditional. (Certainly seems to
| trigger many Americans.)
| js8 wrote:
| I don't think people should have right to be forgotten, just like
| they shouldn't have the right to be killed by someone or right to
| be sold to slavery. I think people should rather own their
| mistakes, and should behave to be remembered fondly rather than
| disgracefully. Forgiving someone should happen on terms of person
| doing it.
| eropple wrote:
| And when that "right to be forgotten" is being exercised to
| expunge demonstrably false information that, because the
| internet is generally a swamp of copy-paste today, will be
| replicated endlessly to that person--not even a notable
| person's--detriment? Or because, say, they have been the victim
| of a crime perpetuated by a popular person and that popular
| person's stans won't leave them alone?
|
| I recognize the potential problems, but there are absolutely
| good and just reasons for this in the main.
| gruez wrote:
| >And when that "right to be forgotten" is being exercised to
| expunge demonstrably false information that, because the
| internet is generally a swamp of copy-paste today, will be
| replicated endlessly to that person--not even a notable
| person's--detriment?
|
| Does that mean if there's unflattering information about you
| on the internet (eg. disorderly conduct video), you can get
| that scrubbed by by posting some "demonstrably false
| information" about yourself (eg. that you're a child predator
| and war criminal), thereby causing your whole identity to be
| delisted?
| eropple wrote:
| This sort of gray area is one for a court to figure out. If
| it were me? "Court records and reporting on governmental
| proceedings, including civil and criminal proceedings,
| shall not be included unless a court determines there is no
| prevailing public interest."
|
| Barring that? I think erring on the side of the vastly more
| numerous set of decent people who may be affected by parrot
| farms is probably wise. (And I can't speak to Canadian
| jurisprudence, but it's often the case that courts make a
| broader decision in the American system and constrain it
| down over time.)
| gruez wrote:
| > This sort of gray area is one for a court to figure
| out. If it were me? "Court records and reporting on
| governmental proceedings, including civil and criminal
| proceedings, shall not be included unless a court
| determines there is no prevailing public interest."
|
| Okay but the hypothetical above doesn't include any court
| proceedings or any other government records. It's just a
| video of the person doing something illegal. It doesn't
| even have to be limited to videos/photos, it could also
| be verbal accusations (eg. of sexual harassment).
|
| >Barring that? I think erring on the side of the vastly
| more numerous set of decent people who may be affected by
| parrot farms is probably wise.
|
| I don't get it, are there websites out there dedicated to
| posting false information about random people?
| eropple wrote:
| _> I don 't get it, are there websites out there
| dedicated to posting false information about random
| people?_
|
| Yes. And also prurient and invasive things that may be
| true (which is why we have laws against things like
| revenge porn, which Google also removes from its SERPs in
| some jurisdictions.
| xoa wrote:
| > _is being exercised to expunge demonstrably false
| information that_
|
| We already have defamation law for that, have had it for
| literally centuries. If you can prove in court that something
| is defamation, you can then get court orders around it,
| including having it taken down from the actual source sites
| as well as search engines. There is no new "right to be
| forgotten" law needed for that that that's not what the push
| has been about, it's about people complaining about stuff
| that they say is "outdated" or "harmful" but not actually
| defamatory, you'll notice they don't actually go after any of
| the places that host the content even when it's in their own
| jurisdiction. It's the truth, just an unpleasant truth they
| don't like showing up.
|
| The extent to which government force should be used to wipe
| someone's slate cleaner is certainly debatable. Arguments can
| be made that at one point even a nasty criminal who wanted to
| turn over a new leaf could travel to a frontier or the like
| where nobody would know them or find out about them and start
| anew, and that was a good thing (vs criminals who did that
| and just did more crimes). And that maybe that should be
| something society backs. And then there are arguments against
| it.
|
| But that's a very different debate then if the information is
| simply false.
| anilakar wrote:
| The internet is global yet you can't deport people abroad
| to answer libel charges. Cyberbullying does not have
| borders.
|
| Allowing someone to delist information via the single most
| important bottleneck, the search engine, is a very
| reasonable solution.
| asciimov wrote:
| So someone that is falsely accused of a rape or murder, that is
| widely reported, shouldn't have any recourse after the fact to
| have those stories removed from searches? Often news
| organizations will only report on the accusation and rarely
| update when they are exonerated.
| mehh wrote:
| Google doesn't produce the content, sites do, the issue is
| with those sites surely?
| simion314 wrote:
| >Google doesn't produce the content, sites do, the issue is
| with those sites surely?
|
| Google decides what someone will see when they Google your
| name, they might decide that the articles where you were
| accused of CP have much more priority then the single
| article 1 month later where you were found not guilty.
| eropple wrote:
| One of those things is a reachable legal entity. The other
| is a pop-up content farm whose next instance is a few hours
| of work away. Google is the logical one to ask.
| epakai wrote:
| A library is a reachable entity. Do we ask them to purge
| their catalog of metadata that indicates a particular
| source contains particular data about someone? The
| premise is absurd.
| asciimov wrote:
| That can be extremely difficult to do false information is
| spread widely. Say a story is published by the Associated
| Press and then is republished on hundreds of other
| websites.
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| > I don't think people should have right to be forgotten, just
| like they shouldn't have the right to be killed by someone or
| right to be sold to slavery.
|
| I don't see your logic at all. The premise is something which
| the person is seeking, and your examples are things the subject
| would not want (to be killed or sold into slavery). I
| understand the rest of what you're saying, though.
| Etheryte wrote:
| This doesn't really address the core of the problem which is
| why people often wish to delist, defamation and intentionally
| inaccurate or misleading information. Anyone can go and make a
| website right now that claims that someone else is a child
| predator or a terrorist or what have you. Mix the fake
| information in with some real facts and plausible glue and you
| have your standard fake news level content. Should there be no
| way to get rid of such content aimed at you online?
|
| As a tangential side note, why shouldn't people have the right
| to be killed? Assisted suicide is legal in many countries for
| people who are e.g. battling a painful disease with no hope for
| a cure or improvement with modern medicine.
| kypro wrote:
| Does Canada not have laws against defamation? In the UK and
| US you could make a website and write that someone is a child
| predator but you probably get charged with libel.
| janosdebugs wrote:
| Why the right to be forgotten exists in general: Let's say
| there was a widely publicised murder in your neighborhood. You
| get picked up by the police, your mugshot and name get
| plastered all over the newspapers. It's a mistake. They catch
| the real perp a few days later and you go free. Now every time
| someone searches your name they are greeted with your mugshot.
| You don't get jobs, you don't get to rent an apartment and so
| on. It's not fair, it doesn't serve society in any way, shape,
| or form. You should be able to get that information removed.
|
| The same goes, of course, for any drunken party pictures and
| the likes, which should have no bearing on your life decades
| later.
| thfuran wrote:
| >Let's say there was a widely publicised murder in your
| neighborhood. You get picked up by the police, your mugshot
| and name get plastered all over the newspapers. It's a
| mistake. They catch the real perp a few days later and you go
| free. Now every time someone searches your name they are
| greeted with your mugshot. You don't get jobs, you don't get
| to rent an apartment and so on. It's not fair, it doesn't
| serve society in any way, shape, or form. You should be able
| to get that information removed.
|
| Rather than gaslighting the world, shouldn't you just prevent
| the problem? That is, just ban posting that sort of
| information before a conviction.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > ban posting that sort of information before a conviction.
|
| A society that does not make arrest information public is
| one where it is very easy for someone to "disappear."
| That's the whole point.
| supertron wrote:
| You seem to be assuming that just because someone wants to be
| "forgotten" they've done something wrong.
|
| There is a vast number of situations where someone might want
| to be forgotten because _someone else_ has done / is doing
| something wrong _towards them_.
| epakai wrote:
| Then they should be made whole by that perpetrator. If that
| action can just be memory holed for a victim's sake then you
| have motivated the perpetrator to lean on them so their
| wrongdoing can be forgotten.
| mikecoles wrote:
| Your classification of situations by 'vast number' is wrong.
| Most erasures are to hide guilt.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| Tech companies that make money off of hoarding your data have
| clear incentives to push the idea of security over privacy.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Cue all the Canadian politicians asking to be forgotten for
| inviting and celebrating an actual Nazi in Parliament this week.
|
| I'm wary of the "right to be forgotten". In this particular case,
| the complainant (allegedly) had false information posted about
| them that was detrimental. This can certainly happen. But why
| aren't the outlets who posted that false information on the hook?
|
| There is a balance between people having a permanent mark against
| them for doing something stupid and the public having a right to
| know when, say, someone actually commits a crime.
|
| There are PR firms that specialize in "reputation repair" where
| wealthy people will pay a bunch of money to have anything
| disparaging about them removed from the Internet or just buried.
| This can take the form of takedowns but can be way more isidious
| eg buying a local newspaper to simply bury a story.
| [deleted]
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Another right that requires someone else to do something for you
| rather than refrain from doing something to you. I guess the
| whole "force is only justified against force" thing is not
| believed by most Canadians.
| wmf wrote:
| Not exactly a new debate:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
| Simulacra wrote:
| Now do America. I know - a lot of Silicon Valley business models
| are built on scraping and utilizing and selling personal data -
| but people should have control over that data and they should
| have the right to say no.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I think the First Amendment would block anything similar in the
| US.
| jpambrun wrote:
| Not an American, but I think your first amendment only
| applies to gouvernement. Most sites do moderate which would
| run afoul with your interpretation.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Sure. What we're talking about here is government action
| enforcing a putative "right to be forgotten".
| jpambrun wrote:
| The court and the gouvernement are independent and
| different things. In this instance the gouvernement is
| not involved. A citizen is taking google to court.
| philipov wrote:
| I don't have an opinion on whether there should be a right to
| be forgotten or not, but it doesn't do the thing you described.
| We need GDPR or a similar protection. And to do that, it needs
| to be regulatory legislation, not court rulings.
| Kalium wrote:
| What about when it's news articles? Should people have a right
| to control those that might contain their name?
| mgbmtl wrote:
| I think the problem is not so much the news article, but that
| it pops up front and centre when doing a trivial search.
| Also, considering the low levels of alphabetization, most
| people won't even bother reading the article, just the (often
| clickbait) snippet. I'm not blaming the newspaper, I'm saying
| search results should be held to higher standards.
| criddell wrote:
| Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You could be arrested tomorrow
| in a case of mistaken identity. Every time somebody searches
| for "Kalium", the first result might be details about how you
| were arrested for some terrible crime and the follow-up a few
| day later about how charges were dropped would rank way lower
| because that never made the front page.
| Kalium wrote:
| Yes, that definitely could happen. The question is if I
| have the right to personally control what random people see
| if they look up public information about me.
|
| I'm not particularly comfortable with the obvious
| extensions of this. What if I'm a local businessperson
| doing unpopular things? What if I'm running for office?
| Where does it start and stop?
| bdzr wrote:
| So who decides if an individual person has the right to be
| forgotten?
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