Summary of "The Internet Never Forgets"
- The Age published a simple, factual story in the paper and online
- Even though someone did something bad long time ago, Google never forgets.
- For example, Allan, not a real name, was arrested 10 years ago at Melbourne airport because of keeping cocaine and other banned drug in his bag
- Today, if you Google Alan's real name, his past is exposed at the top of the search results
- People for countless reasons have their crimes, misdemeanors, foibles or embarrassing photos forever preserved in the eternal memory of the digital mind
- People also have to be careful when they post something in the face or other social media.
- Pop star Virginia Da Cunha filed suit against Google and Yahoo! since when searching for her name, an old explicit photos of her published on sex sites was found; And in Austria, Max Schrems has become famous for his war with Facebook, which he plans to take to court after he forced it to detail the incredible 1222 pages of data it held on him: pokes, likes, comments, photos, including data he had tried to delete, and data he could not normally access but was for Facebook's own use.
- The difficulty of escaping your past is greatly magnified in an age when every word we speak and every tweet and every Facebook status update is recorded forever in the digital cloud
- In the age of Google, the worst thing you've done is the first thing that people know about you
- The basic internet is built secretly to invade your privacy. It gives you something free, collects, and sells your data. Most of the big businesses on the internet (Facebook, Google) build on that model
- Strangers will exploit your data all the time. Now we have to rescue the truth by calling it 'the right to be forgotten (an old European idea, pre-internet days when people wanted to expunge their criminal pasts from the public record), instead of saying 'the right not to be raped by strangers
- Nowadays, under the new law, everyone would have the right to rectify and even erase personal data concerning them, if it was held or published by a commercial entity. If that right is denied, massive fines apply
- Personal data have become many companies' most prized asset. ''Data is a valuable commodity - a digital currency,'' Vivian Redding says
- Even tiny scraps of personal information can have a huge impact, even years after they were shared or made public
- Fleischer calls the right to be forgotten ''more pernicious than book burning because it attempts to give to individuals the legal rights to obliterate unpalatable elements of their personal data, published in third-party sources,'' he says
- Rosen takes a slightly different view. He says it is fairly uncontroversial to assert a right for people to remove pictures (or other content) that they created themselves but now regret - such as the young teacher in training in the US who put a picture of herself on Myspace as a ''drunken pirate'' and lost her job
- Then there is a third category of information the proposed law would cover: information about you, posted by others.
- This law would allow people to object the posts about them written by others , and leave it up to a privacy commissioner to decide whether or not it's in the public interest,'' Rosen says.
- If you post something or others post you have to accept the fact that it is out there for good. Rosen says. ''That's really where the gravest threat to free expression comes from. It sweeps so broadly, it completely challenges the idea that truthful but embarrassing information should not be able to be removed, that it's necessary for public discourse. ''And it would transform Google and Facebook into censors-in-chief. It really would transform the nature of the internet.''
- Some people don’t agree with this law. And it would transform Google and Facebook into censors-in-chief. It really would transform the nature of the internet.''
- ''It's a very old idea. The internet is highly invasive of this virtue and highly destructive to this virtue. I believe that if people want to live a private life then they shouldn't have to avoid the internet.'' Reputation.com's Fertik says.
- Fetrik also believes that if people want to live a private life then people shouldn't have to avoid the internet
- He says it is transparent why many Silicon Valley companies such as Google and Facebook, who depend on revenue from personally targeted advertising, oppose the law
- Google and Facebook will suffer if there's a right to be forgotten. They're going to have to take different steps and find out different ways to do business. But they are not the internet
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