[seren]

We, the user, are only going to lose some information on "common people", and only the one mindful of their public image, no public figure, on events that probably happened 10 or more years ago. So, yes, it could become harder to find if someone was drunk at their prom night, harder to stalk an ex, but I don't think we are going to lose anything crucial. Basically, we'll be back to pre web 2.0. And I am pretty sure that most people won't request any removal to anyone.

[mike_hearn]

Yeah? Really? And what happens if that common person goes on to later become famous for some reason? Does all the info about their drunk prom night reappear the moment the first newspaper story about them is published?

The distinction between someone of public interest and someone who isn't is entirely arbitrary and open to endless debate. What happens when people start disputing that they're famous enough to no longer meet this standard? Historically it results in giant and expensive court fights, which puts people off from trying this - almost by definition, if you're rich enough to waste money on arguing you're not in the public interest, then you are in the public interest. But making Google do this means unless they charge lawyer like bills, suddenly everyone has an incentive to argue they're not important.

[seren]

> Yeah? Really? And what happens if that common person goes on to later become famous for some reason? Does all the info about their drunk prom night reappear the moment the first newspaper story about them is published?

Let's imagine you have somehow cleaned your past when you were unknown and you are now running for the presidential election. Your past is not going to magically reappear online, but you can expect that some journalist will try to write a bio on you, contacting friends, people you grew up with, etc... And it could happen that your friend Joe would talk about your drunk prom night. So it is back on the public eye, and it won't be removable this time.

Maybe it would have been easier if the information had always been available in the first place, but I am personally willing that some extra effort, both from "data processor" and investigator, would be needed in the sake of the personal data protection of John Doe.

[mike_hearn]

But why do you think the ruling works that way? The justification for suppressing information is that someone isn't in the public interest, the canonical example being a politician that wants to cover up past corruption scandals. Everyone seems to agree that this is a case where data wouldn't get filtered.

But if someone is thinking about becoming a politician, uses their current obscurity to delete the data from a search engine, and then goes on to run in an election, isn't this exactly when we should want to see all that is on the internet about them? So it makes sense that the information would come back.

Your proposed solution to this is that everyone should have to effectively give up modern technology in this case and hope that some journalist, somehow, without any modern tools, finds all the relevant information despite governments helping this person bury it. Why would we give up powerful tools like this? How is that not a Luddite strategy?

I don't see any way this ruling (I hesitate to call it a law because it doesn't seem to be connected to any actual law that anyone knew about) can be applied in any kind of consistent or useful manner. It WILL turn into a giant fight over who is or is not worthy of being censored or not, with lots of people bending over backwards to argue that they aren't really in the public interest. As presumably there are punishments and fines for not censoring enough data, but there's no punishment for censoring too much, this will inevitably hurt not only ordinary everyday people but also democracy itself.

[seren]

Overall, I think it is more dangerous for democracy, if everyone is indexed in a database with their political opinions, religious affiliation, favorite ice-cream flavor, than missing out a few bad apples.

I agree it will cause issues, and create complex cases, but I think it is worth trying. And if it does not work out, it will be canceled or obsolete in 10 or 20 years. It is not such a big deal.

More on UE Data laws : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive

[mike_hearn]

But you're going to be indexed in such a database whether you like it or not because several European countries are already busy building such databases via their intelligence agencies, and the ones that can't afford it have all been striking deals with the ones that can to get access to it.

This "right to be forgotten" conveniently does not seem to apply to governments, only search engines. So from a democratic perspective it's lose/lose.

[seren]

I agree the exception for government agency is inconvenient to say the least...