>RTBF is a nice sounding thing, but feels like it's too easy to abuse to create a censorship regime.

Privacy is not that alike censorship for the individual. That's not a regime, it's a right.

For public affairs we have all kinds of records from the media anyway.

And people should have the right for their past crimes to be forgotten, even murder or whatever. What you did in your 20s is not necessarily who you are in your 50s.

And since public bias, society gossip/meanness nature will be with us for the foreseeable future, we can at least kill the technology and "permanent records" that feed it.

Ok, but do people have a right to remember, too? If you murdered my daughter 30 years ago, I have a right to keep telling people about what happened, including about the person who did it. I shouldn't be censored from talking about what happened to me, just because the person who killed my child wants to forget about it.

>Ok, but do people have a right to remember, too? If you murdered my daughter 30 years ago, I have a right to keep telling people about what happened, including about the person who did it.

30 years on? Why? What good can come out of it? Assuming that the person has served its time (or did it by accident or something)?

But that already does not happen under the GDPR right? Criminal record keeping still works the way it used to.

And what about the person who was wrongly accused/convicted of murder? He deserves to have his incorrect history forgotten, does he not?

What you all described is the nice sounding part of RTBF.

You can then use the same mechanics of those laws to censor things you don't like, as an organization or a government.

It's the age old argument of spirit vs letter of the law.

The spirit might be privacy, the mechanical letter is actual censorship. It is why I don't think something like RTBF wouldn't stand up in the USA, since the law probably wouldn't survive a 1st amendment challenge.

I think we have way worse things to worry about our governments than censorship of Google results.

Whereas personal privacy is an actual, very real problem for people.

You think it might apply 'only' to google, but a smart lawyer can make it apply anywhere.

Think of software patents or the DCMA. Sounds nice in theory, a terror in practice. Any tool exposed free to use for the public, including some very wealthy sociopaths, will be abused.