With all the problems in the world … scratch that … with all the problems in New York State, you would think that a law to protect one’s “right to be forgotten” would be somewhere near the bottom of the pile of priorities for state legislators.
In the words of John Belushi, “but, noooo.”
Legislators David Weprin and Tony Avella have introduced a bill aimed at securing a right to be forgotten. These two lovely liberal New York politicians would require people to remove inaccurate, irrelevant, inadequate or excessive statements about others within 30 days of a request from an individual. Furthermore, it specifies …
that all search engines and online speakers shall remove content about such individual, and links or indexes to any of the same, that is inaccurate, irrelevant, inadequate or excessive, and without replacing such removed content with any disclaimer or take-down notice.
Think about the time that has gone into defining inaccurate, irrelevant, inadequate, or excessive as content which …
after a significant lapse in time from its first publication, is no longer material to current public debate or discourse, especially when considered in light of the financial, reputational and/or demonstrable other harm that the information is causing to the requester’s professional, financial, reputational or other interest.
Thank goodness that they have excepted content related to …
convicted felonies, legal matters relating to violence, or a matter that is of significant current public interest, and as to which the requester’s role with regard to the matter is central and substantial.
Failure to comply would make the search engines or speakers liable for, at least, statutory damages of $250/day plus attorney fees. You gotta love this shit, folks. They always manage to legislate attorney’s fees. God love ’em. Lawyers protecting lawyers.
Thankfully, the equally liberal and no less wacky Washington Post has come out against this legislation, which when you think about it would have the Post, among others, squarely in its sites. To wit, the post had this to say:
Under this bill, newspapers, scholarly works, copies of books on Google Books and Amazon, online encyclopedias (Wikipedia and others) — all would have to be censored whenever a judge and jury found (or the author expected them to find) that the speech was no longer material to current public debate or discourse (except when it was “related to convicted felonies” or “legal matters relating to violence” in which the subject played a “central and substantial” role).
And of course the bill contains no exception even for material of genuine historical interest; after all, such speech would have to be removed if it was “no longer material to current public debate.” Nor is there an exception for autobiographic material, whether in a book, on a blog or anywhere else. Nor is there an exception for political figures, prominent business people and others.
But the deeper problem with the bill is simply that it aims to censor what people say, under a broad, vague test based on what the government thinks the public should or shouldn’t be discussing. It is clearly unconstitutional under current First Amendment law, and I hope First Amendment law will stay that way (no matter what rules other countries might have adopted).
Our founding fathers gave considerable thought to what “rights” ought to be enshrined and rendered inviolable. Take the so-called “right to privacy.” It does not exist. Instead, they, our Founding Fathers, enumerated various protections which ensured that government would have to take considerable effort to invade your privacy. This effected a balance between privacy and the public safety.
Similarly, there is no “right to be forgotten.” Period. It does not exist, and no law can ensure it. Inventing rights is dangerous business. In the present instance, the legislation these two idiots have proposed would protect a government’s power to suppress speech, along with enshrining the power to force people (on pain of financial ruin) to stop talking about other people, whenever some government body decides that they should stop.
Honest to God, do they have nothing better to do?
