{"id":638,"date":"2014-07-28T13:45:11","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T13:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/?p=638"},"modified":"2017-09-09T11:57:10","modified_gmt":"2017-09-09T11:57:10","slug":"the-right-to-remember","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/the-right-to-remember\/","title":{"rendered":"The Right to Remember"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year,\u00a0Mario Costeja-Gonz\u00e1lez won the right to be forgotten<\/a>. \u00a0The Court of Justice of the EU\u00a0ruled Google had to remove search results linking to a 1998 newspaper article<\/a> about the foreclosure of his home (due to unpaid debts he later paid). \u00a0In the ultimate irony, he’s now permanently and widely remembered for precisely what he wanted everyone to forget (the Streisand Effect<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, search engines must consider requests from individuals to remove search results that:<\/p>\n

appear to be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant or excessive in the light of the time that had elapsed\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This raises the key question: \u00a0who judges this? \u00a0Something “irrelevant” to one person might be highly relevant\u00a0to another. \u00a0Not surprisingly, Google is making its point by notifying Web sites when results are removed<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

This decision raises fundamental questions about the right to inform & freedoms of speech and press. \u00a0The newspaper’s freedom to publish the foreclosure news is clearly protected, I am free to link to the news, and this blog post will eventually show up in search results. \u00a0It seems arbitrary that some have freedoms and some don’t.<\/p>\n

For better or worse, search technology has permanently changed the privacy calculus. \u00a0Since the dawn of time we’ve enjoyed “practical obscurity<\/a>“, where a lot of personal information was hard to identify, locate,\u00a0or access. That’s changed, and legislators will now chase the issue with law and rulings in a never-ending game of Whac-a-Mole<\/a>. For example, how long until someone finds ways to detect links that were removed and publishes them?<\/p>\n

(Given this new world, a far better strategy for Mr. Costeja-Gonz\u00e1lez would be to generate new content and bury the foreclosure news in the noise.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The Internet never forgets; plan accordingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year,\u00a0Mario Costeja-Gonz\u00e1lez won the right to be forgotten. \u00a0The Court of Justice of the EU\u00a0ruled Google had to remove search results linking to a 1998 newspaper article about the foreclosure of his home (due to unpaid debts he … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":640,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions\/640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}