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by regoldste
4414 days ago
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Fair enough, you're correct that no new right was created in the EU. I was reading your comment as defending the concept of it as a right, and so I took issue with the notion that it should be a right. Reading the opinion does not allay my concerns about the meaning of this opinion and the scope of its consequences. It is only "pragmatic and reasonable" to the extent that you agree with the policy underlying the opinion, which I certainly do not. Taken at face-value, it would seem that the EU is effectively denuding the internet of its power for disseminating knowledge quickly and cheaply, and thereby democratizing the processes of determining truth. The court has approved a pernicious form of content restrictions that will be based on the utterly toothless (not to mention absurdly subjective) standard of "relevance," and driven by individuals whose interests are contrary to the public interest in information. Like I said before: relevance to what? The fact that this opinion is issued in a case where the party objected to a record of his previous foreclosure--a fact with undeniable relevance to, e.g., future lenders or business partners or anyone else who needs to know someone's credit history--indicates just how high the standard for relevance will be. In my view, giving government (or any powerful corporation or individual) the power to curate the information available to citizens is one of the greatest threats to a vibrant, functioning democracy. We should be extremely wary of any efforts by the government to be the arbiter of truth, and while I don't know enough about the case or EU law to predict how this will work in practice (in fairness to the EU, they very well could administrate this with considerable restraint), I think we should be wary of this opinion as well. |
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In this case we have laws about privacy (human rights, foundation of democracy) vs laws about freedom of expression (press, transparency).
Where there is an overlap the top courts must determine which one is more important. In this case they determined that privacy is more important, in a way that didn't remove the factual record but limited data processing so that both things could be preserved and protected.
I do agree with that, even though I probably share the opinion everyone else seems to have that transparency and freedom of press is also really really important. But for me, I personally think without privacy you cannot have democracy, which in turn serves to protect openness. And that does mean that there is this conundrum built-in to democracy, as the very foundation is built on not being fully transparent and what if that's what the people are asking for.