Canadians have a ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google, Federal Court rules
A "right" to destroy other people's memories, and that it unironically goes under the shockingly Orwellian new speak "right to be forgotten", is one of the more horrifying recent things to see both spread and actually get embraced by so-called defenders of the people. There is no parallel in history. People absolutely can be naturally forgotten, but the principle that there is a right to have others forget naturally leads down a very, very ugly path. What people think about us and remember about us is NOT our data, it's theirs even if it's about us. If someone is spreading something factually and materially wrong there are already a myriad of tools to correct that.Edit: I think honesty and HN spirit compels me to steelman against my own argument as well. An argument can be made that there was a time when it was possible for someone willing to take some serious risk, cost, and effort to start anew from even a really bad past. Step back a century or two or earlier, and identities and persistent records could be pretty scattered. Somebody who did something pretty bad (but maybe not truly notorious) and served any time but was determined to reform could leave it all behind and travel a thousand miles away with a new name and build a new life (or die trying). The space for that has undoubtedly shrunken in some respects, and looks like it may continue to do so. I can accept that there can be reasonable differences of opinion on that.But against that is what it means to force it to happen. What such powerful legal tools will do when, with total inevitability, they are most effectively wielded by the most powerful as such tools always are. The people who already face the least accountability in many ways also tend to be the ones most able to make use of anything that may give them even a colorable case against critics and detractors. Some people truly reform, but of course some do not. And of course there are the principles involved. Is this something to use force over, because make no mistake, that's what it means to make something a right backed by law. That's what the very nature of "law" is, it's formalized opinions backed by power. The push for this new "right" feels different and dangerous to me then mere basic privacy, or worries about government (or even megacorp) surveillance.