> if yoi tell me your birthday how can i forget it?

That's not really relevant. GDPR doesn't ask people to forget things out of their minds.

So let's rephrase to a more relevant example:

> if yoi provide me your birthday on a web form and I put it in a database how can i forget it?

This now becomes relevant, and easy do answer. You delete it.

>if yoi tell me your birthday how can i forget it?

Ask any husband.

Joking aside, if the memory is on a computer system, as opposed to a person, you can, you know, just delete it.

Out of curiosity, could I legitimately ask Google, GitHub, etc. under the GDPR to delete my name in the AUTHORS file of the git commit it was added in when I contributed to Chrome's v8 engine 10 years ago? Would they have to comply if I did?

Obviously, removing the commit would break git's ability to sign any hashes for that repository after that point…

And thinking it through a bit more, what about the companies that use v8? Could I ask my regulator to get Joyent to remove it from their systems? I'm sure they have copies…

You could ask, but them not complying fall neatly in the legitimate need case...

Ah, this is so interesting! It seems like you're allowed or not allowed to keep data based on the data structure that you use to store it!

Data structure has nothing to do with it. If you stored social media users as fake AUTHORS lines in a git repo, that still wouldn't make you allowed to keep it. In the inverse situation, storing git authorship in the comments table of your photo site's database, you would be allowed to keep it for legal uses.

I interpreted the original posters point that the git repository could not be modified without destroying it. I thought that's how the next poster was responding to it. If you cannot modify an old entry without destroying the integrity of your system, are you required to modify? Either the answer is yes and you effectively cannot use certain data structures (with their integrity) or the answer is no and certain data structures allow you to keep data.

You would want to avoid using a git-like data structure for data you have to delete. But the example was data that's part of making the copyright license function, and you can keep it for legal purposes.

> But the example was data that's part of making the copyright license function

You entirely missed the point of my hypothetical, which was about immutable data structures like git employs.

As it turns out, our business also uses a git-like hash-chained commit log for our normal database. Deleting old entries would thus violate the integrity of our database. Is that now illegal under the GDPR?

When, it's about being able to judge things on their specific merits -- as opposed to having some blanket one size fits all rule.

Law has nuance and cases (and corner cases), it's not some strict predicate.

I agree and understand, but it does give us a likely unintended consequence: no sequential hashed data structures when you are required to be able to modify it. Probably a good thing for hearing less about blockchains!

No. They're required to know who the authors are for legal reasons.