[Foundation-l] Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

[Risker]

The greatest challenge with the entire notion of vanishing is that it is
intended to be permanent. That is, the person who wants to vanish should
not return in the future, under any guise. I cannot speak for any other
project here, but I know that there has been a non-negligible amount of
disruption from people who used the "right to vanish" and then returned to
participate in the project under a new account - often editing in the same
area, commenting on the same topics, and revisiting prior disputes without
linking to their prior account.

On the other hand, as an oversighter I've seen hundreds of pages created by
people that contain huge amounts of personal information (not just about
themselves, but often their family and friends as well) that I have little
doubt they will come to regret in the future.  While we try to mitigate the
harm as much as possible, these pages get mirrored all over the web and are
well outside our control.

I can understand why legislators will have to really think carefully about
this one.  Even within our own communities, there are wildly different
opinions on this issue.

Risker/Anne

On 11 February 2012 12:30, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> Is the worry primarily around article-space, or around Wikipedia users?
> There's already http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**
> Wikipedia:Courtesy_vanishing<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Courtesy_vanishing>,
> though it would have to be made somewhat more rigorous (and no longer a
> mere courtesy) if it were an actual legal obligation.
>
> As a non-lawyer, I would consider our uses in article-space to all fall
> under the exceptions, though I wouldn't want to speculate on whether a
> court would agree. At least in principle, Wikipedia articles only cover
> material of historical, cultural, scientific, artistic, sociological, etc.
> interest. If anything, we're more often criticized for upholding that
> viewpoint too strongly; vociferous complaints about Wikipedia's
> "deletionism" seem to pop up in nearly every external discussion of
> Wikipedia. Though this may lower the bar for people wanting information
> removed from Wikipedia, by providing an alternate route from the usual
> libel-law approach that doesn't require them to prove libel, so might be
> bad pragmatically.
>
> -Mark
>
>
>
> On 2/11/12 7:42 AM, Samuel Klein wrote:
>
>> Forwarding from internal.
>> The right to vanish... or a part of it... proposed as law.
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Richard Symonds<richard.symonds@**wikimedia.org.uk<richard.symonds at wikimedia.org.uk>
>> >
>> Date: Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:46 AM
>> Subject: [Internal-l] Right to be Forgotten
>> To: internal-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/**technology-16677370<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16677370>
>>
>> A new law promising internet users the "right to be forgotten" will be
>> proposed by the European Commission on Wednesday.
>>
>> It says people will be able to ask for data about them to be deleted
>> and firms will have to comply unless there are "legitimate" grounds to
>> retain it.
>>
>> The move is part of a wide-ranging overhaul of the commission's 1995
>> Data Protection Directive.
>>
>> Richard Symonds
>> Office&    Development Manager
>> Wikimedia UK
>> ------------------------------**----------
>>
>> As Bence noted:
>>
>>  You can find the December 2011 draft at  http://epic.org/privacy/intl/**
>>> EU-Privacy-Regulation-29-11-**2011.pdf<http://epic.org/privacy/intl/EU-Privacy-Regulation-29-11-2011.pdf>
>>> (Article 15 is the relevant part).
>>> The stated exceptions do not include expense or technical difficulty,
>>> but include
>>> " except to the extent that the retention of the personal data is
>>> necessary:
>>> (a) for exercising the right of freedom of expression in accordance with
>>> Article 79;
>>>  or
>>> (b) for historical, statistical and scientific research purposes in
>>> accordance with
>>>  Article 83; or
>>> (c) for compliance with a legal obligation to retain the data by Union
>>> or Member
>>>  State law to which the controller is subject; this law shall meet an
>>> objective of
>>>  public interest, respect the essence of the right to the protection of
>>> personal
>>>  data and be proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued; or
>>> (d) in the cases referred to in paragraph 4."
>>>
>>> I'll leave it to the lawyers to decide how this affects Wikimedia (which
>>> is hosted
>>> outside the EEA) and whether any of the exceptions can be applied to it.
>>>
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