[Advocacy Advisors] meeting with Google on 'right to be forgotten'

[Jens Best]

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.

We should first of all develop our own thoughts on this. Where would an
appropiate place for that? On Meta? Is there already some kind of draft
paper about our thoughts as movements/European Chapters?

best regards

Jens Best

[1]
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Sedlmayr#Aufkl.C3.A4rung_der_Todesumst.C3.A4nde_und_Folgen
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Sedlmayr#Murder


2014-05-30 11:10 GMT+02:00 Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov <
dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov at gmail.com>:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I was contacted by Google's Brussels policy office team today and they
> want to meet with me and talk about the recent ruling by the Court of
> Justice of the European Union
> <http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=152065&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=276332>
> that allows users to request information about them be taken off by search
> engines.
>
> They want to discuss their approach in this matter in more detail and
> answer any questions we might have.
>
> Dooes anyone on this list have a particular question they'd like me to ask
> them?
>
> Cheers,
> Dimi
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Advocacy_Advisors at lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy_advisors
>
>


-- 
--
Jens Best
Präsidium
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
web: http://www.wikimedia.de
mail: jens.best <http://goog_17221883>@wikimedia.de

Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
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Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig
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Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
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