So who has it?
In the United States, the court’s ruling would clash with the First Amendment. But the decision heightens a growing uneasiness everywhere over the Internet’s ability to persistently define people against their will.
“More and more Internet users want a little of the ephemerality and the forgetfulness of predigital days,” said Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, professor of Internet governance at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Young people, in particular, do not want their drunken pictures to follow them for the next 30 years. “If you’re always tied to the past, it’s difficult to grow, to change,” Mr. Mayer-Schönberger said. “Do we want to go into a world where we largely undo forgetting?”
Who gets to say what can be said?
Do those who control the past control the present?
Does the First Amendment count?
And since when do we take marching orders from European neofascists?
I have just one thing to say about this ominous idea.
If information can be made to magically and totally disappear, fine. But — as long as some people are able to have access to whatever deleterious information exists about a person — or a government — then everyone should have the same access.
Pigs.
QUESTION: Will Volkert van der Graaf have a right to have his Wikipedia entry removed and all Google links scrubbed? That son-of-a-bitch convicted assassin is now out of prison, and I cannot think of a more damning indictment of the European system. Should we all be told by our betters that it’s time to forget? Or else?
How about Sirhan Sirhan?
Comments
5 responses to “Knowledge is power?”
Maybe vanderGraff will suffer the same fate as Dan White. Someone can give him a knockout pill, arrange a few pictures in his lap, and hook up a hose from his car’s exhaust. I never bought the White death by suicide scene. Assassins usually get what they deserve, one way or another. And like all of us, Pym Fortune and Harvey Milk had knowledgeable friends.
If knowledge is power why do you ban others?
For the vast majority of people, I don’t see this as a problem. By deleting their embarrassing pics (or old blog posts, videos, comments, etc.), it’s gone forever since most people don’t have fans that save every available image.
If you don’t delete the pics you don’t want to share, well get with the times already–because you’re asking for it.
It’s probably a bigger problem for politicians, celebrities, and loquacious people who have never ever used a pseudonym. To which I say, get with the times.
As one of the “loquacious people who have never ever used a pseudonym,” I accept the consequences. Everything I have said along with every picture I have posted in the eleven years I have been writing this blog are there for the world to peruse. I don’t believe there is a right to have one’s public pronouncements unsaid or undone, and I have little sympathy for those who demand such a remedy.
Beyond that, what the Europeans are seeking is the ability to erase even the discussion of past crimes. Sorry, but that infringes on the free speech rights of everyone. (Not that Europeans have free speech, but fuck em for trying to impose their censorship on us.)
On 12 years for first degree murder? Unrepentant murder? Are they insane?