EWeek has a slide show on the EU’s “Right to be
Forgotten” (similar to a Vox Card Stack), link, with a short article by Don
Risinger, here.
The slides point out that a request to be removed from
a search engine result is country-specific, but would apply to all major search
engines. However, there is a movement at
least within France to have all search-result requests for French citizens, when
found valid, honored around the world.
Likewise, some trade groups want the right to be extended within the US,
but that is not seen as particularly likely soon.
Michael Douglas (from the UK, not the movie actor) in
this Ted Talk mentions “digital eternity”. He thinks it is difficult to
implement “the right to be forgotten”. It
is a “domestic solution” to a “global problem”.
Most comments show concern mainly about advertisers “stalking”
people or about very old criminal or civil complaints (which may not even have
resulted in criminal conviction or civil loss) from remaining easy to
find. However, mere mention of someone
with a unique enough name and his being found by a search engine has been known
to create some issues for some people, in the “online reputation” context.
The law still does not force individual websites to
take material down. But imagine the complexities
that could occur if it did. A particular
site might become known as a source of forgettable information on people and be
individually searchable. On up to three
occasions, I have removed names of individuals (in one case an entire article)
from legacy sites when the circumstances of the request were unusual enough
(and unlikely to recur).
Recently, Google advised Blogger users of privacy laws
in Europe, and posts an additional succinct privacy notice for Blogger postings
when brought up with most European country TLD’s.
I received an email notification of this article late
morning today,
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