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Comment by davesque | Hacker News Reader

I'm a bit surprised at all the negative reactions I'm seeing here in response to this. This really seems like a win for individual rights which the tech community is normally all about.

As I see it, the heart of the matter is that the average person is really bad at placing any random fact they learn about someone (or something) in its proper context. So that means people should have some legal leverage when it comes to all the information (accurate or not) that is available about them online.

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The right to be forgotten is censorship. You may believe it's worthwhile censorship, but the fact remains that it's censorship. That's why we're negative about it: it's censorship. Please don't act surprised.

Plus it's pretty much technologically infeasible, and will produce a giant layer of disgusting hacks that don't even effectively protect the people they're supposed to. That might have something to do with why the tech community isn't happy.

Right to be Forgotten is not an individual right in the classic sense. It is a positive right, one which is really a privilege enforced by the state under the pretext of a "right".

Whereas owning and using an illicit drug (as one example of the kind of individual rights we support) does not require coercing others (be they corporations or individuals) into doing anything, RTBF does. It requires the state coercing (in this case) corporations into censoring (this this case) true, publicly known information visible on their websites.

To me it seems like Yet Another Barrier To Entry For Tech Startups (TM). I remember the good old days (re: 10 years ago) when you could make all sorts of cool things without being bogged down by regulations. I guess that era is over (at least for certain categories of tech like search engines).

Also, your right to be forgotten seems to be infringing on my right to remember.

Are you serious or do you yearn for the days when cars didn't have seat belts and paint still contained lead? Start-ups will adapt or they don't deserve to exist.

I'm not saying all regulation is bad. But some regulation is has a major stifling effect on innovation and startups simply because the cost of compliance is too high for new players (but manageable for established big boys).

Cars had been equipped with seat belts before it was required by law.

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