A lot of people (especially those not trying to hide information about themselves) agree that the Right to Be Forgotten in Europe is problematic for a variety of reasons, including the censorship of information.
The latest to speak out against the current situation is none other than Tim Berners-Lee, the guy responsible for the World Wide Web. Via CNET:
“This right to be forgotten — at the moment, it seems to be dangerous,” Berners-Lee said Wednesday, speaking here at the LeWeb conference. “The right to access history is important.”
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In a wide-ranging discussion at the conference, Berners-Lee said it’s appropriate that false information should be deleted. Information that’s true, though, is important for reasons of free speech and history, he said. A better approach to the challenge would be rules that protect people from inappropriate use of older information. An employer could be prohibited from taking into account a person’s juvenile crimes or minor crimes more than 10 years old, for example.
The EU recently put forth some guidelines for the right to be forgotten, for search engines to work with, though they don’t go very far in terms of quelling the biggest concerns many have with the ruling, such as Berners-Lee’s.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
