The Right To Be Forgotten Panel At SXSW 2012 Debates Preservation vs. Deletion

Pull up your most embarrassing moment in your mind, whether it's a secret or not, and pretend it's now online. Whenever someone searches your name, it's on the first page of results.

How do you feel?

That was the first question asked at the "Right to be Forgotten: Forgiveness or Censorship?" panel at this year's South By Southwest interactive conference. Led by two lawyers -- the Associate Director of ATLAS, Jill Van Matre, and Meg Ambrose, PhD candidate at the ATLAS Technology, Media and Society program at the University of Colorado -- the panel sought to philosophically address the contentious issue of privacy on the Internet.

"One of the big questions we have is how human do we want this space to be? Why do we want to keep this stuff anyways? Why don't we just let people move on and delete this stuff?" Ambrose said.

Matre and Ambrose named two emerging schools of thought: the "preservationist" and the "deletionist."

Preservationists, they said, believe that the Internet is a robust world of information and ideas, and that there should be an accepted understanding of whatever you put out there digitally is now owned by the universe.

Conversely, deletionists believe that the Internet is just a further representation of our everyday world. They believe that as these worlds have begun to completely align, we should be owed the same rights to privacy in both.

According to the panel, many laws regarding personal privacy are inadequate for the new digital age.

On such example is the case of the so-called "Star Wars Kid." The hugely viral video of the teen reenacting scenes from the movie resulted bullying of 15-year-old Ghyslain Raza, causing him extreme emotional trauma.

His parents eventually sued for emotional damages, something Ambrose said was the only feasible option with today's laws.

"You can break it down into monetary harm, representational harms or identity harms," Ambrose said. "It doesn't just harm the way that other people see you, this has an impact on the way you see yourself."

They emphasized, however, that changes to the legal system should be approached with caution, if at all.

'We don't like legal action against hurt feelings. It offends our Americanness," Ambrose said.

Many other countries, however, have embraced the idea of a right to be forgotten. Most recently, the European Commission passed legislation to protect users information. The new law means stricter privacy control over Internet companies -- including the ability of users to demand information be removed, and fines for anyone who further uses it.

But what the European Commission spins as protecting personal privacy, companies decry as a slippery slope to censorship. If one person can opt to have their history removed, where does it end?

Ambrose said that perhaps one of the best real world examples of deletionism in the U.S. is the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In 2005, the Federal Trade Commission passed an amendment to the existing act requiring that credit agencies destroy personal credit information.

From the FTC website:

Reasonable measures for disposing of consumer report information could include establishing and complying with policies to: burn, pulverize, or shred papers containing consumer report information so that the information cannot be read or reconstructed."

But you can't burn, pulverize, or shred the Internet. At least not yet.

So which are you, preservationist or deletionist? Let us know via our quick poll (below).

Quick Poll

Do you believe in the "right to be forgotten" online?

Yes.

No.

I'm neutral about it.

VOTE

Share your vote on Facebook so your friends can take this poll

From our partners

Comments

[aflutterbug]

03:44 PM on 03/15/2012

I'm guessing someone is voting to delete the article title's misspelling "Peservation " :)

[Gronkie]

12:59 PM on 03/15/2012

Santorum is all for it.

[sbyvssby]

02:32 AM on 03/15/2012

There is a right to privacy. You have a right to not digitally encode yourself in most situations. If you don't want to be in pictures you can't go to places where people take them.

Requiring that all digital storehouses be subject to requests for deletion of specific information would be antiquarian in its attitude and overly complicated in its application.

A world that can see everything will have new and different standards for what "crosses the line." Something is only new once. When you see it all the time its just part of the scenery.

[StinkyMoBub]

09:41 AM on 03/15/2012

Corporations use the information they gather on you and then resell it to others. If information you've produced is the new "product" or is used to create other products, then you should be getting paid for its use.

And as the owner of that product, you should have a right to delete it whenever you want...

[sbyvssby]

06:19 PM on 03/15/2012

Key words: "they gather." That makes it their information. I agree to give it to them by opting in to their nifty services I want to participate in.

They are going to be gathering and processing the information whether or not they resell it. The information is almost a side effect.

If this is a "problem" the only "solution" would be free markets choosing competitors that they feel are most responsible with data. The ultimate fate of your data would have to be a buying or selling point, and today it just isn't.

[ScentOpine]

01:25 AM on 03/15/2012

Times and technology changes, we realize that good and bad can come with new technology.

The people who believe the bible and constitution were written on stone tablets by the hand of god (while also believing everyone should have the right to by machine guns) will never understand this.

More reasonable people will understand that the non-rich and non-political class need protection from the massive exploitation possible with new technology.

CEOs hate privacy for us - that's something they believe only they are entitled to. Meanwhile, they are exploiting our personal information with no royalties to us.

Keeping things on-line forever sounds dangerous to me. If you request something to be deleted, it should be deleted. Without question.

[Rob Huggins]

12:23 AM on 03/15/2012

"burn, pulverize, or shred papers containing consumer report information so that the information cannot be read or reconstructed."

Oh, I like that, I think next time it comes up, I'll ask for the pulverize method.

[crescent20]

10:53 PM on 03/14/2012

In my view, there is something to the ability to self-censor, namely personal responsibility. Sure, if someone needs to censor something after the fact they obviously should have been responsible earlier...but acknowledging their mistake and taking down the picture of them mooning the camera in the group photo at the company christmas party is also a responsible act. One that they should not be penalized for or prevented from making.

The only sticky slope I see is if someone were able to use this as a way to hide crimes. But that is why Service Providers and Law Enforcement have a different level of access to history data. I should absolutely not be able to hide a crime by self-censoring. I should absolutely be able to remove from the internet the picture my mother took of me at 2 years without my pants on from the rear...and force others to remove it if they are using it.

[speedntktz]

09:57 PM on 03/14/2012

Awe... Whats wrong? The Facebook and Twitter generation is beginning to have second thoughts about posting their every thought online for the whole world to see because their thoughts and actions are so hip and relevant. It's just like publishing folks. You put it out there and its out there for anyone to find, reference, catalog and question you "so what were you thinking?".

[tonedef]

08:23 PM on 03/14/2012

"But what the European Commission spins as protecting personal privacy, companies decry as a slippery slope to censorship. If one person can opt to have their history removed, where does it end? "

But where does WHAT end, exactly? It's a person's own history, and self-censorship is a person's own prerogative, so how is a right to be forgotten a 'slippery slope' toward anything whatsoever?

[Rob Huggins]

12:37 AM on 03/15/2012

Should a congress person be allowed to ask for all truthful news stories about themselves to be removed if they think it is embarassing? There are times where a person's record should not be erasable just because they want it to be.

I think the idea of the line being drawn at the same places non-internet life draws the line seems fair, but what type of line actually fits in the cyber world. The internet is publishing, broadcasting, games, news, resumes, phone books, business applications, social media, and personal journal all rolled into one. As soon as we can find the line that is drawn through all those things, the line for the internet should be clear as day.

[theroundearth]

08:44 PM on 05/08/2012

Private persons and public persons are not in the same situation. While a journalist could investigate a politician's behavior, a neighbor wouldn't be allowed to publish what he knows about you. And you -— as a private person — should have the right to retract what you published about yourself.

[Errant]

06:23 PM on 03/14/2012

Once it's up there, it's bloody well impossible to remove it. . IF. . it is hilarious or interesting.

There is no question. We should be deleting stuff and forcing others to delete things we don't want up there.

. . .

We should be forcing ourselves to be more careful. To be smarter. If you don't want something out there, don't bring it to the net. It's not a 100% defense, but that's the best we can hope for.

Simply put, if it gets online then it is either your fault or a friend's fault and if that's the kind of friend you have, clearly your judgement is impaired.

Being online has risks. Accept those risks or don't but it doesn't change the fact that once you step onto the net, anything you do or show can spread like wild fire if someone things its hilarious or interesting.