BBC to publish 'right to be forgotten' removals list

Re:BBC to publish 'right to be forgotten' removals list by anigbrowl on Friday October 17, 2014 @01:36PM (#8472181)

Don't be so literal-minded. If you have been following the news you might have noticed some deliberate Ebola hoaxes in the last week, where a man on an aeroplane and another on a bus shouted out they had Ebola and threatened to deliberately infect other passengers and the bus driver, respectively. The fact that nobody was actually hurt in these two incidents doesn't alter the deontological basis for a rule against such behavior.

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Re:BBC to publish 'right to be forgotten' removals list by pessimizer on Friday October 17, 2014 @01:58PM (#8472364)

Is 'shouting fire in a crowded theater' supposed to be figurative now? It used to be offered as the archetypical example.

>The fact that nobody was actually hurt in these two incidents doesn't alter the deontological basis for a rule against such behavior.

Then what possibly could? Hegel's ghost?

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Re:BBC to publish 'right to be forgotten' removals list by anigbrowl on Friday October 17, 2014 @02:18PM (#8472491)

Reasoning by analogy is the norm in the American common-law system. If you were to maliciously cause some sort of dangerous stampede at, say, a sporting event, you would not be able to get off the hook by arguing that you were not in a theater. Once more, I urge people to consider the difference between civil and common law systems. A lot of people seem to assume the standards of one apply to the other.

Then what possibly could? Hegel's ghost?

The improbability of anyone being hurt. If you stand in the middle of a public park and yell 'the sky is falling!!' nobody will take you very seriously, but even if they did and decided that it was necessary to run indoors the probability of a stampede occurring is vanishingly low. But maliciously causing panic in an enclosed space significantly elevates the risk of injury to others, because the more panicked people are, the more irrationally and dangerously they may act, a phenomenon for which we have abundant evidence.

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Re:BBC to publish 'right to be forgotten' removals list by pessimizer on Friday October 17, 2014 @05:51PM (#8473554)

Shouting in a crowded theater is not an analogy, it's a benchmark. This seems obvious to me - if it is an analogy, then what does the theater represent?

What it says is that some line has to be set, and this concrete situation described is something that obviously should fall on the other side of the line. (Therefore, people should be imprisoned for speaking out against the war Q.E.D.)

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