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Comment by seren | Hacker News Reader

I also agree with the right to be forgotten principle.

However regarding its current implementation, I don't necessarily agree with the fact that private entities are the one judging the requests (and they never asked for it!). If it is some sort of legal requirement, in my opinion, it should be reviewed by some kind of judge, administrative body or peers, that would apply consistently the rules.

Finally regarding the EU vs Global application of the rule, I have to side with Google : you can't comply globally with every specific request from every country or sensibility, because it would mean banning a lot of things (from blasphemy, homosexuality to various disputed historical events, or territories...). I can't see that working practically.

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QUESTION: Why should you have 'the right to be forgotten'?

Technically, because the EU countries are sovereign and can decide what rights their own citizens should have.

*EDIT: wrong word

That's why people may have such rights, not why they should.

Nope, that's pretty much all it takes. Society decides itself what rights its members have which is why they are not the same everywhere.

Or can you suggest a better authority to define them?

So if society decides that redheads have no right to live, then they have no right to live, end of story?

This is a dangerous school of thought, authoritarian in spirit - the state as the source of ethics and the ultimate moral authority (Hegel's view).

The opposing concept is called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

OK, let's take the third paragraph of your link as an example, where it basically describes how Natural law forms a philosophical bedrock of US society. Why were documents resulting from it accepted by society (eventually, more or less)?

Clearly from the same page there is not just one and societies existed and still do that don't share the same underpinning. They could have turned it down and go with something else.

My point is that they didn't because this was close enough to existing shared values. That doesn't mean it matched anyone's perfectly or that you can't move them over time, but they are not imposed.

Well, they may be for a while under occupation of a stronger force, but surely that is not what you argue for.

In your hypothetical example it would mean yes, they don't in that society. Like converting to a different religion can get you killed in some places even if it is completely unimaginable where I am from.

I am certainly not agreeing with or defending choices of every society under sun.

> In your hypothetical example it would mean yes, they don't in that society

So you mean "rights" in descriptive sense, you're talking about the de facto rights. This obviously excludes rights that are legally violated, but which are still there (from ethical point of view).

If someone asks why people should have a certain right (as nthcolumn did), they clearly mean rights in the latter sense of the word. Otherwise it's not an answer because it's circular logic: why would society grant you these rights? Because society grants you these rights. Well, like every tautology it's true ("technically", as you put it), only it's of no use :)

How did you construe that from what samastur said?

Society and the State are not the same; they can, and have often been in conflict over exactly that issue.

Of course, but when it comes to making decisions (including decisions that are granting rights), societies have to rely on institutions they built.

>Society decides itself what rights its members have which is why they are not the same everywhere.

Again, that's how you know what rights people in fact have. If you want to decide whether people should have a right, the law is irrelevant. That's an ethical question, not a legal one.

Laws get changed all the time, which doesn't mean the underlying ethics changed.

I agree with the last sentence, but I wasn't making a legalistic argument.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the difference between us is that you see ethics as something that "lives" outside of society and I don't. Ethics are not one or universally shared so societies themselves decide which ethical norms are shared widely enough to form foundations for laws etc.

So right can be any feasible privilege that is widely enough shared.

How does your model make sense of such statements as "we should have more freedom of speech"? If what should happen is defined by what's already law, then isn't the law by definition already what should be?

Because "we should have more freedom of speech" is not a universal truth. This should become obvious if you compare Israel, where holocaust denial is illegal, to the UK, where it is not. Clearly the 2 nations have different opinions on the limits of freedom of speech.

    Laws get changed all the time, which doesn't mean the
    underlying ethics changed.

Are you sure about this? I would have thought that laws change precisely because moral and ethical sensibilities do change.

    If what should happen is defined by what's already law...

I don't think that's being argued.

>Because "we should have more freedom of speech" is not a universal truth.

I'm not saying it is, I'm saying under the model presented above, the statement is meaningless, not just right or wrong. But people do make such statements, and mean something by it.

>This should become obvious if you compare Israel, where holocaust denial is illegal, to the UK, where it is not. Clearly the 2 nations have different opinions on the limits of freedom of speech.

And it would be coherent for someone to say in Israel "we should have the right to deny the holocaust", which shows that "should" is not the same as "it is legal".

>I would have thought that laws change precisely because moral and ethical sensibilities do change.

"moral and ethical sensibilities changing" != "ethics changing".

If you believe murder is right, does that make it right?

>I don't think that's being argued.

I was talking specifically about whether people "should" have rights. If you refer to laws to answer that, you're equating laws with "should".

"moral and ethical sensibilities changing" != "ethics changing".

What evidence do you have that there is any kind of "ethics" outside of what was called "moral and ethical sensibilities"?

If you believe murder is right, does that make it right?

For the person who believes, it does.

I was talking specifically about whether people "should" have rights. If you refer to laws to answer that, you're equating laws with "should".

No one said that laws are why people should have rights. What was said was "society decides", as the group of moral agents that it is. Laws are the result of that decision.

>What evidence do you have that there is any kind of "ethics" outside of what was called "moral and ethical sensibilities"?

I myself tend towards error theory, but am fluent enough in typical moral thoughts and arguments to partake in them. So I'm not going to claim that I have evidence for objective morals. What I will claim, is that the sense that people have for morals is not satisfied by law.

>For the person who believes, it does.

That's a tautology and not particularly useful.

>No one said that laws are why people should have rights.

Actually, someone asked "Why should you have 'the right to be forgotten'?"

You answered "Technically, because the EU countries are sovereign and can decide what rights their own citizens should have."

Note the word "should" in there; that statement directly implies that law leads to (whatever you mean by should).

>What was said was "society decides", as the group of moral agents that it is. Laws are the result of that decision.

Laws are made by a tiny subset of society and rarely consider other cases implied by but not directly mentioned in the law. Case in point, this law in France was made before Google existed.

Well, clearly I failed to make myself understood, and I apologize. When I said, "countries can decide", I meant "country" as in the general entity which includes society and its general moral code, not the legislative body specifically (nor any other component of the State).

Thanks for clarifying. If you're using that definition, it's no longer enough to say "look, that's the law"; you need to demonstrate public support for it as well. If politicians pushed it through without broad public support, then it's not a sign of societal ethics.

Neither ethical values of a society nor its laws are static entities. They both change over time. One cause (of many) for change are eventually persuasive parts of society not happy with current agreements.

Most of us probably do not completely share values of the society we live in. It is up to us to push it in right direction.

>Most of us probably do not completely share values of the society we live in. It is up to us to push it in right direction.

This seems to me to contradict the earlier statement by icebraining that you defended

>Technically, because the EU countries are sovereign and can decide what rights their own citizens should have.

That doesn't really answer the question, does it

But isn't it obvious why people might benefit from such a right? If you are uncomfortable with something in your past (not all too uncommon), baam, you benefit. The only interesting question is, if this right should stand above free speech, free trade, etc. There are good arguments for both views.

Still this wasn't an answer :) And no it's not that obvious to me. While some people certainly would benefit, it doesn't mean that all of them should get this benefit, and some other people would lose on that.

In a nutshell - if someone gains a "right to be forgotten", you're losing the "right to remember".

Because all your ancestors had it. It's a natural right, which stems from the abundance of new information generated every minute (and the brain's incapacity to contain all of it) and the inability to keep detailed records immediately accessible.

That situation has changed with the combination of web 2.0 and search engines, so now we need laws to enforce the old, natural situation while we (as a society) work out in which direction we want to go.

The EU isn't asking Google to block it globally, it's asking Google to block it to all of the EU, regardless of domain.

The fact that Google is unable or unwilling to filter Google.com results for particular countries is not the EU's problem.

That's not how the internet work, and you know it. If the only thing standing between me and an uncensored google is a cheap vpn, then the French Courts are meaningless.

And they should be, in this case. Why should their request be propagated globally when they're (+ the EU, I guess) the only ones clamoring for it?

But really the only thing standing between you and an uncensored search is a trip to bing(|duckduckgo|yahoo|etc).com, rather than google.com.

I wish people behind copyright law would figure that out too, but alas...

Why wouldn't you (Google) be able to comply globally?

And as I understand it, it wouldn't mean banning, as you mentioned, blasphemy, homosexuality etc. but it's the right to be forgotten for a natural person. E.g. ask to remove certain statements about oneself (in case you are an 'unremarkable' person).

Of course this all is not black and white and details have to be discussed / fighted about.

It's working pratically in the case of DMCA... Am I not the owner of my privacy? My digital life isn't copyrighted? It's weird.

That’s an interesting idea.

Just claim copyright on your name and then DMCA the fuck out of all these sites, including Google.

You get the same effect as the right to be forgotten (probably even more disruptive, as this solution also works for companies) but Google has to apply it internationally.

And, the worst thing, many companies actually use DMCA to ban bad reviews already.

The DMCA is relevant in the US only, so I don't think that's going to work. Moreover, one cannot simply, "claim copyright on your name." It just doesn't work that way.

The funny thing of the DMCA is, that, due to Safe Harbor laws, it applies to all companies in the US and EU, and they have to take it down internationally.

Yes, surely it doesn’t work that way, but it’s DMCA. Companies are using it to take down everything with "Pixels" in name, it’s not hard to abuse it.

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