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Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by js8 on Saturday September 30, 2023 @09:44AM (#37715369)
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.
Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by supertron on Saturday September 30, 2023 @09:51AM (#37715426)
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.

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by epakai on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:32AM (#37715800)
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.
Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by mikecoles on Saturday September 30, 2023 @06:22PM (#37720490)
Your classification of situations by 'vast number' is wrong. Most erasures are to hide guilt.
Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by Etheryte on Saturday September 30, 2023 @09:49AM (#37715412)
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.

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by kypro on Saturday September 30, 2023 @11:06AM (#37716124)
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.
Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by asciimov on Saturday September 30, 2023 @09:59AM (#37715506)
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.
Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by mehh on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:03AM (#37715545)
Google doesn’t produce the content, sites do, the issue is with those sites surely?
Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by eropple on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:08AM (#37715577)
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.
Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by epakai on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:15AM (#37715644)
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.
Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by asciimov on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:12AM (#37715619)
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.
Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by simion314 on Saturday September 30, 2023 @11:16AM (#37716237)
>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.

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by eropple on Saturday September 30, 2023 @09:57AM (#37715487)
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.

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by xoa on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:12AM (#37715623)
>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.

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by anilakar on Saturday September 30, 2023 @11:39AM (#37716478)
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.

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by gruez on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:03AM (#37715539)
>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?

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by eropple on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:07AM (#37715571)
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.)

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by gruez on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:14AM (#37715636)
> 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?

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by eropple on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:22AM (#37715706)
> 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.

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by dbsmith83 on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:05AM (#37715554)
> 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.

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by js8 on Sunday October 01, 2023 @01:56AM (#37723079)
I meant that these things are illegal even if the victim agrees with them.
Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by janosdebugs on Saturday September 30, 2023 @11:36AM (#37716439)
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.

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by thfuran on Saturday September 30, 2023 @04:45PM (#37719617)
>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.

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by fknorangesite on Saturday September 30, 2023 @05:48PM (#37720206)
> 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.

Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by thfuran on Sunday October 01, 2023 @08:19AM (#37725234)
If the government is trying to disappear people, then having in place the mechanisms for a right to be forgotten seems like it would only help them disappear people more thoroughly.
Re:Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Feder... by janosdebugs on Sunday October 01, 2023 @01:42AM (#37722995)
That is the case in a lot of places for arrests, but wrong convictions are a thing too and those get reported. Plus, there are situations where someone posted a presumably funny picture of someone else, which you should absolutely have the right to not be found. It has an impact on your life for no good reason.