Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Well, kids have always been warned about their permanent record. 
Kids today are digital natives so they know that the internet is forever and that if you say it you own it. The world has always been tough, for young and old. The only thing that has changed is the nature of the pitfalls.
Anyway, the whole "right to be forgotten" thing smacks of a lack of integrity and an unwillingness to answer for their own deeds. |
Such statements are often being made by people who were themselves all to happy to leave knowledge of their youthful misdemeanors behind in the small towns they came from. They also show an enviable detachment from today's realities.
With smartphone cameras being ubiquitous, it is illusionary to believe that young people can control the information on them that's posted online. Get wasted at some party and someone else may very well post pictures online.
What about malicious gossip? "Amanda B at XY High is giving bl**jobs for a tenner" - good luck trying to have something like that taken down from some forum that's registered in Belize or in Panama.
Do you want to tell us that it's fine for any personnel department of any company where she applies for a job some years later to get that stuff after googling her name?
No, there is absolutely no right to be able to obtain what's basically a dossier on someone by only typing a name into a search engine. It's shameful that the ECJ had to make new law with politicians being asleep as usual.
Then there is the usual hypocrisy of Americans tittering about "censorship" in Europe. There are plenty of links being removed from search engines after DMCA take-down notices. Apparently the interests of Disney Corp. do take precedence over those of e.g. a vulnerable teenager, though.