The Right To Be Forgotten (Online)

[DonRocks]

This is interesting.

"Pianist Asks The Washington Post To Remove A Concert Review Under The E.U.'s 'Right To Be Forgotten' Ruling" by Caitlin Dewey on washingtonpost.com

Hell, I'd *love* for the Post to remove the article they wrote about me a few years back. The author calls the implications of the request "terrifying" (as an aside, I really like the way she wrote this article), but I would counter by saying that a private company, like the Post, being able to write essentially whatever they want to about someone, without being held accountable (short of a judge ruling it libel), is equally terrifying - of course, this has existed since the notion of a free press, but it's amplified in this age of digital media and high-powered search engines. On the other hand, we write about restaurants, and not always complimentary things, so a similar concept applies to me and everyone else here.

As an aside, from what I've seen of this pianist, the review seems to describe him perfectly. But that's not the topic at hand.

Perhaps most interesting of all is one of the comments in that article which says, "Search engines are rewriting the history of the world." Now *that* is interesting.

[MC Horoscope]

The very phrase "right to be forgotten" sounds like the point of view of the news media (censorship!) rather than the private citizen's right to have their reputation protected against lies without having to go to court.

For years if you searched on my friend's name in Google the first thing that came up was a vicious post on a message board that he was an unfair trader. Should he have had to go to court to protect his reputation from such a lie?

In my own case a search on my name came up first with a mean, snarky comment about something incorrect I posted on a message board. I haven't seen it in a long time, but THAT's the kind of thing the law is intended to address, not the press's freedom of speech.

[DonRocks]

The very phrase "right to be forgotten" sounds like the point of view of the news media (censorship!) rather than the private citizen's right to have their reputation protected against lies without having to go to court.

For years if you searched on my friend's name in Google the first thing that came up was a vicious post on a message board that he was an unfair trader. Should he have had to go to court to protect his reputation from such a lie?

In my own case a search on my name came up first with a mean, snarky comment about something incorrect I posted on a message board. I haven't seen it in a long time, but THAT's the kind of thing the law is intended to address, not the press's freedom of speech.

You raise a good, fundamental question, but what is the answer?

I think the answer is, "Be educated and skeptical," but by the looks of things over the past few millenia, that only has a chance of succeeding with a minority of the population. Orson Wells, in "Citizen Kane," said, "Don't believe everything you hear on the radio."