Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case
We&#x27;re rapidly moving to a point where an official (government) criminal record is not important to folks you want to interact with -- landlords, employers etc. They will instead turn to Google. As such, Google might as well be the official record for many people.<p>And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google&#x27;s pagerank is doing them a disservice.<p>I don&#x27;t know if expunging records is the right thing to do, but it&#x27;s worth discussing. There&#x27;s no guarantee that searching a criminal&#x27;s name will bring up the recent history where they&#x27;ve done their time, shown contrition, and is contributing to society. Instead it&#x27;ll be the most highly cited -- likely news about their crime.<p>As a society, we approve of jail being the mechanism to &quot;forgive&quot; a person&#x27;s crime. As such, isn&#x27;t it horrible that Google&#x27;s pagerank will only turn up what they&#x27;ve done wrong in the past? Again, I don&#x27;t know if expunging the records is the right thing to do (in fact I believe it&#x27;s wrong), but I do think it&#x27;s worth debating.