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Samuel Klein | 11 Feb 07:42
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Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

Forwarding from internal.
The right to vanish... or a part of it... proposed as law.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Symonds <richard.symonds@...>
Date: Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:46 AM
Subject: [Internal-l] Right to be Forgotten
To: internal-l@...

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
> (Article 15 is the relevant part).
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Delirium | 11 Feb 18:30

Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

Is the worry primarily around article-space, or around Wikipedia users? 
There's already 
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@...>
> Date: Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:46 AM
> Subject: [Internal-l] Right to be Forgotten
> To: internal-l@...
>
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Risker | 11 Feb 18:45
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

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@...> 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.
>
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Federico Leva (Nemo | 11 Feb 19:13
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

Risker, 11/02/2012 18:45:
> 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 don't think it's useful to discuss this. It's certainly not to the 
point; remembering some German cases might help to understand what could 
be the problem, for articles.
This has been discussed some weeks ago on WikiIT-l and we didn't reach 
any conclusion about the dangers posed by the proposed legislation, also 
because as usual journalists are not able to say anythin useful.
The linked article looks very old as well; there's some material here: 
<http://ec.europa.eu/justice/newsroom/data-protection/news/120125_en.htm>

Nemo

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Fred Bauder | 11 Feb 19:25
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

I think the biggest problems might involve users who have been trashed
for one reason or another, justified or not.

Fred

> Is the worry primarily around article-space, or around Wikipedia users?
> There's already
> 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.
>>
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Yaroslav M. Blanter | 11 Feb 19:39
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Favicon

Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:25:56 -0700 (MST), "Fred Bauder"
<fredbaud@...> wrote:
> I think the biggest problems might involve users who have been trashed
> for one reason or another, justified or not.
> 
> Fred
> 

My understanding is that the legislation is not so much about users (which
we can handle anyway), but about notable persons which have some
information about them leaked into media and they want toi remove this
information. I remember when I was still an admin in Russian Wikipedia, I
had a long conversation with an admin of a website of a rock star, who
wanted to change the birth year in the article on the person (basically,
making her five years younger) even though we had sources claiming the
opposite. This did not happen, since I accidentally knew I was younger than
the star, and the proposed year would make her younger than me, but I think
the legislation in this case would require to have the information on the
birth year deleted from all sources (and, obciously, also from our
articles). I would like to hear a legal opinion though.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Fred Bauder | 11 Feb 20:06
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

> On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:25:56 -0700 (MST), "Fred Bauder"
> <fredbaud@...> wrote:
>> I think the biggest problems might involve users who have been trashed
>> for one reason or another, justified or not.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>
> My understanding is that the legislation is not so much about users
> (which
> we can handle anyway), but about notable persons which have some
> information about them leaked into media and they want toi remove this
> information. I remember when I was still an admin in Russian Wikipedia, I
> had a long conversation with an admin of a website of a rock star, who
> wanted to change the birth year in the article on the person (basically,
> making her five years younger) even though we had sources claiming the
> opposite. This did not happen, since I accidentally knew I was younger
> than
> the star, and the proposed year would make her younger than me, but I
> think
> the legislation in this case would require to have the information on the
> birth year deleted from all sources (and, obciously, also from our
> articles). I would like to hear a legal opinion though.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>

Anything that produces a substantial expansion of a court's docket, and
requires close examination of a mass of material, will prove very
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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen | 19 Feb 08:12
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

Do the people at MeatballWiki know?

--

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--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]

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Federico Leva (Nemo | 19 Feb 18:08
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, 19/02/2012 08:12:
> Do the people at MeatballWiki know?

Why should they care?

I don't know if this has already been mentioned somewhere: 
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2012/02/our-thoughts-on-right-to-be-forgotten.html
It's a very cautious comment I think.

Nemo

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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen | 19 Feb 19:06
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
<nemowiki@...> wrote:
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, 19/02/2012 08:12:
>
>> Do the people at MeatballWiki know?
>
>
> Why should they care?
>

This is where it all started,

http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RightToLeave

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Thomas Dalton | 19 Feb 19:55
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

On 19 February 2012 18:06, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro@...> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
> <nemowiki@...> wrote:
>> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, 19/02/2012 08:12:
>>
>>> Do the people at MeatballWiki know?
>>
>>
>> Why should they care?
>>
>
> This is where it all started,
>
> http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RightToLeave

The Right to Leave is very different from the Right to Vanish. Nobody
can stop you leaving, so the Right to Leave is just a statement of
fact. The Right to Vanish is something that we (and possibly this new
law) explicitly grant to people.

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Fred Bauder | 19 Feb 21:13
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

> On 19 February 2012 18:06, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro@...>
> wrote:
>> On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
>> <nemowiki@...> wrote:
>>> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, 19/02/2012 08:12:
>>>
>>>> Do the people at MeatballWiki know?
>>>
>>>
>>> Why should they care?
>>>
>>
>> This is where it all started,
>>
>> http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RightToLeave
>
> The Right to Leave is very different from the Right to Vanish. Nobody
> can stop you leaving, so the Right to Leave is just a statement of
> fact. The Right to Vanish is something that we (and possibly this new
> law) explicitly grant to people.

How can we remove ten thousand comments and signatures using the users
real name or well-known handle?

Fred

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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen | 19 Feb 21:58
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 10:13 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud@...> wrote:
>> On 19 February 2012 18:06, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro@...>
>> wrote:
>>> On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
>>> <nemowiki@...> wrote:
>>>> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, 19/02/2012 08:12:
>>>>
>>>>> Do the people at MeatballWiki know?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Why should they care?
>>>>
>>>
>>> This is where it all started,
>>>
>>> http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RightToLeave
>>
>> The Right to Leave is very different from the Right to Vanish. Nobody
>> can stop you leaving, so the Right to Leave is just a statement of
>> fact. The Right to Vanish is something that we (and possibly this new
>> law) explicitly grant to people.
>
> How can we remove ten thousand comments and signatures using the users
> real name or well-known handle?
>

And how about all the mirrors, blogs, etc.

--

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--
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Thomas Dalton | 19 Feb 22:25
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

On 19 February 2012 20:13, Fred Bauder <fredbaud@...> wrote:
> How can we remove ten thousand comments and signatures using the users
> real name or well-known handle?

With a bot (or AWB) going through the What Links Here list for your
user page. People have done that before (although maybe not if they
had ten thousand comments to change).

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Marc A. Pelletier | 19 Feb 23:07

Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

On 19/02/2012 4:25 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> With a bot (or AWB) going through the What Links Here list for your 
> user page. People have done that before (although maybe not if they 
> had ten thousand comments to change).

Yes, and on enwp at least the one time I remember this having been 
attempted on a large scale caused so much disruption and strife that it 
resulted in bans, departures and ArbCom-level disputes over more than a 
year.  In other words: it can't be done systematically without causing a 
revolution.

-- Coren / Marc

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John Vandenberg | 19 Feb 23:29
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Re: Fwd: Right to be Forgotten

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 7:13 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud@...> wrote:
>> On 19 February 2012 18:06, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro@...>
>> wrote:
>>> On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
>>> <nemowiki@...> wrote:
>>>> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, 19/02/2012 08:12:
>>>>
>>>>> Do the people at MeatballWiki know?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Why should they care?
>>>>
>>>
>>> This is where it all started,
>>>
>>> http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RightToLeave
>>
>> The Right to Leave is very different from the Right to Vanish. Nobody
>> can stop you leaving, so the Right to Leave is just a statement of
>> fact. The Right to Vanish is something that we (and possibly this new
>> law) explicitly grant to people.
>
> How can we remove ten thousand comments and signatures using the users
> real name or well-known handle?

If we are using the wonderful Liquid Threads extension, all signatures
change when we rename the account.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LiquidThreads
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