I tend to agree. I believe there are already procedures in place to remove false or misleading information, going after the people trying to organize information so it can be more easily used without the same standards of proof is just encouraging bad behavior.

And check your email.

Yeah, saw you were already goof-proofing it for me.

I liked them going after Google for it and Google 'publishing' the request, bringing it to light better than if the idiot(s) had just kept their mouths shut.

I happen to agree with someone that said Google shouldn't be taking the requests, instead they should go to a judge to decide if/if not it 'should' be forgotten, and the judge then advises Google and the rest of the search engines.

As for Neal and Tess, they take the long view, if you did wrong but you've cleaned up your act they might 'forget' your shaded past ...

As for Neal and Tess, they take the long view, if you did wrong but you've cleaned up your act they might 'forget' your shaded past ...
That's how past misdeeds should be treated. Forgiveness is not forgetfulness.

One I tended to dislike came from management. They'd exhibit patterns of bad behavior and ask for "temporary" cutbacks that never seemed to go away, and then responded to the resulting poor morale with lines like "look forward, not backward" -- basically saying that the temporary measures are now permanent and they'll be cutting more from there.

It's all on the wheel, it all comes around ...

I spent seven years at dell in their server support group while most management stayed less than two before being moved elsewhere in the company. And dell seemed to have a 18-24 month cycle in their 'hiring' methods. The problem was they'd use it on all parts of the business at once ...

1) We're got too many people = hiring freeze ... but the server support group was still growing to meet the demands of all those sales! So overtime went through the roof.
2) Overtime is costing too much = no overtime, just 40 hour weeks ... and now there aren't enough man-hours to help all those calling in, long queues (100s in the queue for a group that didn't have a hundred techs in the group -- much less on the floor at the same time!)
3) hiring again ... too bad it'll be 2-4 months of training before the next tech hits the floor (and a few months OJT before they're actually pulling their own weight ...)

About the time we were 'almost' maned enough, there'd come the next hiring freeze and we'd start getting tons of overtime again. I pissed off a few managers the second/third times around by being able to tell them what was coming next from the top floor -- they didn't want to believe dell could do something that stupid, but here it comes again!

SOP - management mismanagement. Short term, blindered decision making clashing with real-world issues.

Hummm fun times hahaha

Be careful what you ask for -- you might just get it!

In which case (I whish to trandsend time and space and the furry borders, to become a Rakshan)

Heh, Google will never tolerate such a "right".

As I said above, it's not Google's responsibility -- it's the courts, and Google then has to 'remember' what 'not' to link you to, so it has to remember -- just not tell. (though I'd laugh my ass off if Google added all those links under a 'demanded to be forgotten' search! )

.

tax office, n.: Den of inequity.

Sounds like an inversion of the Streisand Effect. Go ahead and look that up on TV Tropes.org : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....treisandEffect

!!! WARNING !!! TVTropes will eat your life!


Oh found a minor typo:
“Not is this database they don’t,” ...
I'm thinking that should be an "in".

Thanks for the fix, and yeah, I know all about the 'Streisand Effect'. Google even used it on the first 'test case' of a guy trying to hide his bankruptcy riddled past. And in this case, he just tried to pull a con on the Folly, so of course they'll warn all their friends about it!

An interesting take, and sadly a lot of people would make the same mistake, con or not. As for the right-to-be-forgotten stuff, the only thing I can say is that the internet is still a new frontier, something that most forget. Look at any new technology to be publically available and the early days are rife with experiments, bizarre laws, and many many mistakes.

The joke is that the original files are still on the internet -- what they wanted was for Google not to 'link' to them in any searches.

So if there was a news paper report of you falling off a table while dancing drunk, the report would still be there in the papers web files -- you just couldn't find it searching [table drunk dancing falls] (not that I know if you've ever fallen off a table while dancing or drunk! )

Yeah, a lot of people do dumb things which before might be forgotten, but it's harder to be forgotten when your buddy posted your drunk singing on his facebonk page. Or you met this nice girl (or guy) and they're now going to Google you and find that pager of swearing you did the last time you got dumped. Or the place you're applying for a job sees it ...

To be forgotten, what a wonderful thing ...

But what if trying to hide what happened in school meant you also couldn't claim to have spent all those years in school?

All or nothing might cause second thoughts.

Like this guy. "Forget me!" "No problem, to us you are now dead."

That part about employers running the "universal search" (entering your name on Google) is no laughing matter.
I had to try and explain away a smear page of libel and ridiculous lies that a hater wrote about me over a decade ago, before I could get my current job.

Yeah, all the false positives (and negatives) are going to make searches a complete waste of time soon.

What do you mean soon? They're next to useless already, especially for people with common names(i.e. not me...yet another thing to thank my dad for). Employers just haven't realized it.

Well, memories can be tricky... forget all, not just the bad. Wish I could do that... forget bad things I've done/have happened. But, how can one learn from the past if you don't remember it?

Nice tale. Thanks for posting. Mine should be up in a couple weeks... still in Vegas and my companion leaves for home Sunday. After that, I'll have a chance to proofread/fix/post.

And never tell a computer to 'forget it' unless you want to really start over again.

Glad you like it, now if I can just get the main tale moving!

Good read, and thought provoking. As one who can hardly claim familiarity with internet topics such as this, you make a point in a succinct story. I like that.

In this day and age people are learning the hard way that the world is getting smaller. Some misdeed that might have only been known/learned of by a few who will someday forget is no longer as once there's a post/blog/rant of it is on the web forever -- and can spread to the point that the whole world might laugh at it.

I foresee this one of the most difficult problems in the near future.

I have heard the argument of 'but everyone aleady knows it' against the right of something being forgotten.

One problem I see is that children and teenagers post their stuff left and right under their real name. Some of this might come back to haunt them years, maybe even decades later. One little party were you got totally smashed and did something silly for someone of your age. Years later a possible employer finds it and decides you are too much of a risk.
And remember, one yrear you are in high school, two years later you might not get a job, because your possible employer does a curiosity search on your name and findsa picture of you drunk in god knows what situation and decides not to hire you.
Non-adults get better tratments by the law for being underage, but anything on the internet stays to haunt you forever?

But there is something much more problematic.
Someone puts a pirated copy of a song, movie or game online. Ok, clear copyright violation. But by the argument above, the product is online. Everyone already knows it. So, the crime has been comittet by the original poster.
By the argument above, why delete it? Everyone already 'knows' it.
I know it's a stupid argument (not that we haven't any stupid laws to begin with).
But think about it.
A picture/recording of me posted without my consent is a violation of my personal privacy.

So, if a priated copy of a product can get removed, why not pictures or recordings of me?
In both cases, you won't get every copy deleated, but at least it won't e connected t my name anymore and with some luck won't connect to me.

BTW
Even if something was posted with my consent because I was an inexperienced youth, why can't I request it being removed? At least the copies that have my name beside it? The only option would be a complete change of my name, so I can start with a blank slate. Which leads to something very similar like in your story.

Like I said, I see this as one of the major problems in the near future, because it includes other factors as well.
Product piracy for example.
A digital copy of a product can be copied a million times in seconds. How is the law enforcement going to track down everyone in their country to bring them to justice? How long will the courts be clogged with just one case and a thousand perpetrators? Not to mention who is going to pay for the prisons needed?
And how is the police going to proove who was on the computer to download it? THanks to malware my computer can do stuff on it's own and it gets more and more difficult to proove what really happened.

Don't get me wrong, the company deserves money for their products, most importantly because the emploees deserve to be paid for their work, but I can't help to wonder how this is going to be solved in the future.

P.S. At this time there is a case before a court, were some stupid teenagers beat up another while another recorded it on the smartphone and postet it online. They posted the proof of their crime themselves.

So it is more than just believable that someone posts some stupid stuff they have done without consiering the long-term consequences.
Not to mention if their friends re-post it.

All true, and you have no control over what others post. Which can be a problem when running for office at 50 and the other side finds the facebonk pictures your long ago buddy loaded of you doing something 'dumb' 30 years ago. What's even more worrying is laws and values change over the decades. For a personal example, my mom had me when she was 19, dad was 25. and this was after being married a year after dating for two before tying the knot. This means an over 20 guy was chasing and under 18 gal -- which was fine back then, but with have the guy in trouble in this day and age ...

Oh, and the laws they're playing with don't make the original 'post' go away, they just prevent Google and the like from linking to it directly. So as I pointed out above this won't remove the info, just make it harder to find.

*nodnod*
Which reminds me, my parents married a year after my birth and I was adopted by my father (apparently the easiest way to change my family name back then). Not a problem in the 70's and by the time I entered school, it did not matter anymore. Heck, I only found out that tidbit when I found my birth certificate when I was a teenager. But if it had been born only ten years earlier, I might have gotten a lot of insults in school if that got out.

Also, a few years ago some teachers were sued for spanking their students decades ago when that was more acceptable. I don't know if someone even checked how the laws were back then. These teachers were sued on the basis of todays laws and agreed values. I didn't follow that beyond the media, but the thought alone and combined with what you said about changing values and the internet...
*shiver*

Heh, my mom was glad when she was finally retired from nursing for 18 years. Seem if you were an OB (delivery) nurse and something was wrong with the kid, you could be sued for anything thought to be birth related -- until the kid hits 18 ...

And there was some band that one of their covers had a nude preteen girl on it, perfectly legal, sold in record stores no problem. Now a days they'd lock you up for 'looking' at that cover 'child porn' they'd claim.

The only thing you can say about this world is that it's getting nuttier every day ...

You said it.

Very nice addition to your story line up

we tries ...