Hi Dimi, Hi all,
"Consulting" Google is something we shouldn't have any interests in. Having a talk could be interesting.
The matter of social forgetting shouldn't be something which is decided by a council of "digital wise men & women" as Google is planning (I'm not at all happy to see Jimmy Wales in there) nor should it be decided by a government agency for official forgetting as the German government just announced to do (and what reminds me of some dystopian scifi story).
The subject of deleting information out of commercial search engines is one problem (not basically ours), the ongoing campaign about making "the internet" forget about information (by cutting down the search results) can be a great problem for us.
It is a cultural question which shouldn't be forced by any laws or court decision.
There was a intense case about the right to oblivion and the right to have the information who murdered Walter Sedlmayr in Wikipedia[1][2]. Both in the German and the English Wikipedia this was a long dispute but in both, as of today, the names of the murders are noted and when you type in their names in Google Search the first results are the informations about them being convicted murderers who took their time in prison and now are free again.
The question is, and taking the example of a murder makes this case so considerably, how we handle redemption and forgiveness as a society. The variety of social interaction makes a clear decision about what to forget and what to remember first look like a question which was in former times answered by religion. In todays open and free societies this question is based solely on the individual level - only very strong cultural barriers can "overwrite" this in very few cases and even there it is often cause for great dispute.
Which leeds us to the only level on which the "right of oblivion" could be considered - the level of power over the people by scoring algorithms. We score each other on so many levels that this debate needs some reality check. Take the example of the murderers of Walter Sedlmayr. I bet many job applications of them went negative - officially not because they have been murderers and some fellow workman would feel uncomfortable having a murderer working next to him, no, surely officially there were many many other reasons why they didn't get a job, a creditline etc.
So, scoring means power, knowing things about somebody leads to scoring possibilies. Intransparent scoring or scoring with highly disbalanced conditions are unjust and the need to level the play field is immanent. Search competence (even only knowing how to use Google cleverly) brings an advantage in personal scoring skills, this is a cultural and social challenge, not something you can regulate by law or with a bunch of selected wise men & women judging over your case.
We, as the civil movement of Free Knowledge have to find or own answers beyond this cheap solutions which are now "negotiated" between business and governments. Therefore we should be careful to not let us be taken in by Google or any government.