"The right to be forgotten public versus privacy on the internet"

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales : EU's Right to be Forgotten is 'deeply immoral'

More than 50 links to Wikipedia pages will be removed from search results, as a result of the EU's Right to be Forgotten legislation

"I've been in the public eye for quite some time; some people say good things and some people say bad things. That's history and I would never ever use any kind of legal process like this to try to suppress the truth. I think that's deeply immoral."

The legislation allows European citizens to request that links to "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" information be removed from search results. The web pages themselves remain online, but the links from search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing disappear.

In its first public statement on the recent European Court of Justice's ruling, Lila Tretikov, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said that the Right to be Forgotten is undermining the world's ability to freely access accurate and verifiable records, and is allowing "inconvenient information" to simply disappear.

"The European court abandoned its responsibility to protect one of the most important and universal rights: the right to seek, receive, and impart information," said Tretikov.

“As a consequence, accurate search results are vanishing in Europe with no public explanation, no real proof, no judicial review and no appeal process.”

Comments made:

1-“The internet show remain free of censorship.I have no issue with restricting access to child pornography, violence, hate sites etc. If an individual has an issue with the contents of a site they should take it up with the site, not require search engines to remove links to it.”

2-'The European court abandoned its responsibility to protect one of the most important and universal rights: the right to seek, receive, and impart information'

“There is no such right. There is a right to express one's opinion, but we know no law that gives us the right to unlimited information about other individuals. Therefore the Court doesn't have the responsibility that is mentioned here.”

3-“There will be serious information and awareness gaps when criminals, rapists, pedos, etc. manage to get their internet histories erased. 
Someday it will happen like "oh we didn't know, we checked but we couldn't find information that so and so has a criminal background...".

4-“Speaking at Wikipedia's annual Wikimania conference in London today, Wales said: "History is a human right and one of the worst things that a person can do is attempt to use force to silence another."

5-“As founder of Wikisage, I like to add that we do not agree with mr. Wales' criticism of the new legislation. We endeavour to spread knowledge, not information. There is a difference.”

If removing search engine links to web pages constitutes a destruction of "history", as Mr. Wales implies, then isn't the compilation of links by search engines the creation of "history"? Why are search engine developers now in charge of creating history and their work to be considered inviolate?”

*Blog article:

“Robert Peston of the BBC lamented that his writing had been cast “into oblivion” after links to a blog post he’d written about Stanley O’Neal, the former head of Merrill Lynch, disappeared. Peston assumed O’Neal had complained; it was actually someone who had left a comment on the post. Early tallies suggested that criminals made up a fairly high percentage of those interested in being forgotten.”

The Argument

Privacy activists say the decision could offer relief from vindictive online behavior, as well as a fresh start for people who want to forget past mistakes. Europe’s justice commissioner argues that removing the links isn’t an unreasonable burden on search companies. Google detractors say the company has been profiting from the misery of others by selling advertising adjacent to its results. Free speech advocates say Google is now abetting censorship, abridging press freedom and revising history. Some also say the court made an unreasonable imposition on a private (and non-EU) company and paved the way for some heavy logical quandaries. Google thinks the people who post information should be the ones to deal with privacy concerns; it hates the court’s ruling. Mayer-Schonberger thinks it doesn’t go far enough. An EU agency found that enforcing it would be “generally impossible.” And who, after all, will pay for the whole thing?

"The EU Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, welcomed the court's decision in a post on Facebook, saying it was a "clear victory for the protection of personal data of Europeans".

"The ruling confirms the need to bring today's data protection rules from the "digital stone age" into today's modern computing world," she said."

Remarks:

Problems with Criminality & unethical behaviour! Us it lawful & ethical to keep information away from the public eye & knowledge on matters & people who broke the law or conducted unethical deals in the past?

We need to question the value we as people, individuals & public place on the Facts? The Truth? Knowledge? Truth in Education? Truth in the Information we are gathering? …and what kind of Information are we referring too?

  

We need to consider the manipulation of information for the sake of creating a specific history, a convenient truth & knowledge to suit some people in favour of some and against others?

We need to ensure that if we erase facts, figures & event in our history, it is not to be deliberate distortion of reality & real facts constituting acts of deceit against people and their true history… 

Ref:

"The right to be forgotten public versus privacy on the internet"

-http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_data_protection_en.pdf

-http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/80567.html

-http://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/right-forgotten/

-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27388289