
Italian Supreme Court: News "expires", online archives would need to be deleted - eagerToLearn
http://espresso.repubblica.it/attualita/2016/07/01/news/a-ruling-by-the-italian-supreme-court-news-do-expire-online-archives-would-need-to-be-deleted-1.275720
======
tehwalrus
"Winston Smith works as a clerk in the Records Department of the Ministry of
Truth, where his job is to rewrite historical documents so they match the
constantly changing current party line. This involves revising newspaper
articles and doctoring photographs—mostly to remove "unpersons," people who
have fallen foul of the party. Because of his proximity to the mechanics of
rewriting history, Winston Smith nurses doubts about the Party and its
monopoly on truth."

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Smith](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Smith)

~~~
nickff
Thanks for posting this.

Many are also persistently pushing to change what is 'acceptable' vocabulary
to change how people think, as Orwell described in the Newspeak appendix.[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-
Four#The_Newsp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-
Four#The_Newspeak_appendix)

~~~
joeframbach
[http://alexjs.com/](http://alexjs.com/) for example.

~~~
sqeaky
In 1984 they weren't trying to adjust the vocabulary to be more inclusive and
make every feel more comfortable about open discourse in a fully optional way.

They wanted to erase words that could denigrate the party, change the meanings
of words that could be used against the party or add new words that could only
say good thing about the party.

Things libel laws that stop free speech, how many politicians wiggle through
the truth or how people who try to mandate political correct speech like
extreme SJWs seem like the problems indicated here.

------
ythl
We should just pass a new law called "The right to scrub your public image",
which allows you to control how the public perceives you or your company
online. If someone says something unflattering about you, you can force them
to delete it.

That's basically what all these European "privacy" laws are amounting to.

~~~
CaptSpify
I've always kind of thought a better system would be one that lets you assume
a new identity. This is a war that laws won't win. Data will get out, and once
it's out, it's near impossible to get back. And people do make mistakes that
shouldn't haunt them for the rest of their lives. A better system is one that
lets you disassociate with that data.

~~~
peeters
A restaurant could do exactly that. If the negative publicity for something
they did only a couple of years ago is too much for them, they could change
their name in a heartbeat.

Instead, what they want is to selectively groom what the internet "remembers"
about them. Remove the bad, keep the good.

~~~
a_humean
There is a local upmarket curry house near me that is quite good and has been
around for nearly 5 years winning plenty of local awards for food and service,
but on TripAdvisor about 1/5 of the reviews refer to a steak house that was at
the same address before this curry house opened. They did not get good reviews
and didn't pass health inspections. Even though the curry house changed the
owner, name, management, waiting staff, chefs, food sourcing, decor, and menu
the reviews are still tied to the address.

Fortunately their newer reviews are so glowing that they still get over 4
stars average and their front window is covered in plaques of their awards and
their most recent 5/5 health inspection (in the UK its quite common for
restaurants to flaunt their 4/5 or 5/5 health report on their front door as
advertising - there is no legal requirement to show it except in the city of
Hull where now almost every restaurant now has at least 4/5 rating as a
consequence given the death sentence that a something below 3/5 represents).

------
anexprogrammer
Counter View. I don't expect this to sit well with HN. Is everything to be a
sentence for life? I, and the law in many places, don't think that's fair.

Whilst I don't think 2.5 yrs is the right balance, I do think much reporting
should expire to an archive. If a restaurant did something wrong 10 years ago,
but clean since (that's in the context of the UK with regular, visible,
standards checks), who cares about the old offence? If they're still doing
wrong they would probably have other, non-expired, offences in the last 10
years.

Here in Europe we have the concept of rehabilitation of offenders. Whilst the
UK has a poor reputation for reform (we go for a more US lock 'em up
approach), and Gove leaving Justice looks to have put paid to reform for
another decade, we have the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act since early 70s.
After a varying period past record is considered spent - 2 yrs prison or more
is never spent, the rest expire after a period depending on sentence. Fines
expire after 7 years I think.

So the stupidity your child gets into at 18, whilst out drinking, doesn't pop
up in searches when 30 and applying for jobs. Legally you don't need to
mention it again apart from some exceptions like applying to be a judge or
joining police.

The internet is starting to make a mockery of that reasonable intent. The law
thinks you can become clean, you have been legally for 15 years, but your
potential employer finds a BBC page from 1998, and decides to not extend the
offer. That's not reasonable either.

Perhaps news should archive in step with laws such as that. Trivia and public
order offences expire quickly, 10 year sentences never. Somehow make it a bit
less available behind a paywall, or some credentials. I'm talking of _intent_
not practicality. I realise a mirror elsewhere would render that void.

In the 80s and 90s it was only the exceptional who got background searches.
Manually by searching through archives. Reporters would dig into some suspect
politician only when it was something major. That's _also_ the wrong balance
and meant many things that should have been known in the public interest
didn't come to light simply because it was difficult to check.

~~~
danso
It's a tough thing in some cases. When I was in college, it was very normal to
print the names of students in the police blotter (e.g. "John Smith, sophomore
in engineering, was booked on charges of public nudity on Friday"). The
internet existed but Googling things was not a mainstream habit. Nowadays, I
think many college blotters anonymize the names, and that feels right to me.
We have a right to know what's on campus, but fucking up as a drunk college
student shouldn't affect your post-college life.

But an expiry date, if I'm reading this right, of a few years? Many trial
processes don't finish up by then. In my journalism class, I force the
students to go on Lexis Nexis and find 10-20 articles in the past decade or
older that have been written about whatever they're writing about. Primarily
to make them realize that whatever they think is new is not new, and to
challenge them to pursue a story that looks at the big picture.

Making it harder to find stories in the past only adds to the dumbification
and self-absorption of society.

~~~
anexprogrammer
The legal expiry timer starts at date of sentence.

A John Smith might end up locally famous for a while, regret those Tequila
shots leading to nude in the town square, damaging a statue, and a £500 fine.
Some years after the magistrate passes sentence it ceases to exist and he's
not obliged to tell. If you get three years for something more serious it
never expires. If you're John Smith you're in luck having a common name, but
if you have a rare name...

In former years the reporting is in some dusty library or newspaper microfiche
archive forgotten until he runs for Prime Minister perhaps.

There's lots of cases where an innocent accused, or sometimes even the victim,
can suffer significant reputational damage from a widely reported case. The
adversarial system, and occasional trials by media, seems to encourage that.

I don't think having older, expired, reports of more minor offences moved to
archive that charges to search, or requires you to have journalism ID or
something leads to dumbification of anything. It shouldn't cease to exist,
just become far less trivial to get at. More an attempt to restore balance,
regardless of practicality.

A bad debt, even a lot of bad debt, expires in 5 or 6 years from your credit
report, but a minor offence 20 years ago doesn't?

~~~
ivan_gammel
It's much more difficult problem, because reputation damage happens not only
as a result of court decision. A politician could say very dumb and offensive
things when he was young - should it really affect his political career?

~~~
sqeaky
Hasn't hurt Trump and he says "very dumb and offensive things" now.

People generally don't care what you did in the ancient past. The only time it
matters is when it is a big deal. Like that Republican in the primaries who
fabricated an incident involving a knife. Without a public record we wouldn't
know.

We need an uncensored public record so we can verify what people say and guide
our future decisions.

~~~
sqeaky
I think people are downvoting me because they don't like the idea that Trump
and Hillary are neck and neck in the polls.

I am fairly certain his saying "dumb and offensive things" is a huge part of
his success. Where I am Trump has about 60% of the voters. When I talk to
people they say they like the idea of the wall or that they do want muslims
banned. These are each dumb and offensive and as far as I can tell the reason
people in my area support Trump.

Whether or not you support Trump, if you understand what he is saying, they
are objectively (or at least not much room for subjectivity) dumb and
offensive.

------
a_humean
This appears to be an overzealous extension of the right to be forgotten.

The right to be forgotten is a debate worth having as there are individuals
that may have historical public records that may be false or no longer in the
public interest to be so widely available.

E.g: Man falsely but not maliciously accused of rape or murder in press
reports and later being exonerated in court without accompanying press report
detailing the exoneration, and now finds it very difficult to get a job or
start new relationships. Or a business man who filled for bankruptcy 30 years
ago who finds search engines return news reports of his bankruptcy as the
first and only return on himself and thus makes finding business partners or
credit near impossible.

These seem like people who need protection from a age when its far far too
easy to get access to the historical public record, but removing a factually
true report that is just two years old seems a bit extreme; without knowing
the full context.

What the right to be forgotten should be is some kind of mechanism of adding
friction back to the process of getting certain kinds of information when it
is in the public interest that this information shouldn't be so easy to get
at. It should not be about removing public records altogether. How you do that
without inadvertently harming the public interest or allowing abuse seems like
a pretty hard or impossible problem.

~~~
hx87
I think the "right to be forgotten" should be replaced with the "right to not
have old information considered", which is a much better compromise between
the public interest and privacy. In your example, a person false accused of a
crime wouldn't have the record expunged, but the record would be heavily
tagged with notices that it was a false accusation, and it would be illegal to
use that information in considering him for a job and it would be a severe
breach of social norms to use that information turn him down for a
relationship.

~~~
Analemma_
Considering old information, whether it's relevant or not, is something human
psychology does automatically and inexorably. So when you talk about a "right
to not have old information considered", you might as well speak of your right
to jump off a cliff and soar through the air instead of hitting the ground.
These European laws are doing their best to account for the unfair tendencies
of human nature, while your counter-proposal isn't really an improvement over
the situation we had before.

> "... but the record would be heavily tagged with notices that it was a false
> accusation ..."

There's been some literature lately about people trusting their
doctors/lawyers/etc. _more_ when that person reveals that they have a conflict
of interest. A similar backfire effect could well occur here.

> " ... it would be a severe breach of social norms to use that information
> turn him down for a relationship ..."

Oh good. Approximately when can we expect the social norms to change? And are
you accounting for the fact that it may happen never?

~~~
hx87
/Noticing/ old information is automatic, but assigning valence to it and
having it influence a decision to a significant extent isn't. I might not be
able to notice that a person is left-handed, but that doesn't mean I will
favor or disfavor them because of it.

> There's been some literature lately about people trusting their
> doctors/lawyers/etc. more when that person reveals that they have a conflict
> of interest. A similar backfire effect could well occur here.

A file stating that an accusation was false isn't admitting doubts or
uncertainty, though, and it's that admission that leads people to trust
advisors more when they reveal conflicts of interest. That file is flatly and
loudly stating that the accusation was false.

> Oh good. Approximately when can we expect the social norms to change? And
> are you accounting for the fact that it may happen never?

Oh good. Approximately when can we expect law to change? And are you
accounting for the fact that it may happen never?

------
tofu_ink
Be sure to burn all the archived articles in libraries. We wouldn't want pesky
expired history changing our minds.

... wait aren't online archives identical to hardcopy archives.... Silly me,
they are totally different.

~~~
andybak
I'm not defending the ruling but speed of access does make a qualitative
difference with genuine implications.

~~~
hx87
So...make them available only at certain hours and only over a 56k modem?

~~~
ythl
Make it only available to the government. Your average citizen shouldn't have
access to so much information; only the government should.

------
tzakrajs
So basically, the world is much more peachy and less vile to read about in
Italy after 2.5 years. Any economist or business analyst studying the market
in Italy now has even less perfect information. Their studies will be based on
an alternate, unrealistically positive data and lead to worse outcomes.

------
placebo
Would this also include deleting records that this ruling ever took place,
thereby nullifying it?

------
kylecordes
Current historians understand the past by, among many other things, reading
old preserved documents including old news. Future historians are going to be
real irritated if we get in the habit of purging "expired" news. Well maybe
not, maybe if we purge it completely enough we won't even have historians in
the future :-)

------
vincnetas
When todays news turn into history? Should history also expire then?

------
rm_-rf_slash
Hilarious, coming from a country where you can't dig a hole without meticulous
verification that you aren't going to damage unbeknownst Ancient
Greek/Roman/Renaissance artifacts.

------
MrPatan
Also printed ones? Burn all the old newspapers?

------
cmdrfred
"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present
controls the past."

~~~
taneq
But we've always been at war with the Middle East!

------
aaron695
People make mistakes.

We have never had the chance to genetically deal with or lived in societies
where people don't forget.

And worse, now can in seconds find about your worst. Do you think in 50 years
of life you won't make a mistake (Then 30+ years of people knowing about it)

Your small business can be your entire life.

We might not be currently solving this issue properly. But it is still an
issue we are going to have to deal with.

~~~
ggreer
Complete freedom of communication harms some individuals, but the harms of
"right to be forgotten" laws are far greater. No matter how they're tweaked,
they must by their very nature punish people for:

1\. …conveying public information…

2\. …that is true…

3\. …to someone who requested it.

Any law of that sort is inimical to free expression and ripe for abuse.

------
NoGravitas
Old newspapers don't (generally) disappear completely, they just get scarcer
and harder to access. I would expect major newspapers to have complete
microfilm/microfiche archives of their entire 20th century runs. I would think
major libraries would, too. So getting access to a particular newspaper for an
arbitrary date generally involves, worst case, a special trip to the offices
of the newspaper or a library in the same city as it.

What would be needed to do something comparable for online papers? Keep them
online, but de-list them from search engines? Take them offline, but keep them
in offline storage at newspaper offices and libraries?

~~~
panzagl
So basically make this information only available to the privileged?

~~~
lloyd-christmas
I suffer from the "privilege" of uniqueness. I'm the only person in the world
with my first/last combination. There are 12 living people with my last name,
none of us share a first name. A few pages into a google search of me returns
high school newspaper clippings from 15-20 years ago. An employer doing a
background check on me gets my high jump results from 1999 within 5 minutes.
Who's privileged, the 100 people who share the same name, myself, or the
person trying to find information about one of those 101 people?

I would hope you wouldn't need a golden key to try to track down information,
but it would be nice to have my history equally (in)accessible as someone
else's.

------
tzakrajs
Instead of being delusional about people forgetting our past mistakes, why
dont we become a more open society that is less judgemental about past
mistakes but conscious in this reality.

------
ramblenode
They should consider going through and cleaning out the libraries every three
years since those tend to accumulate a great deal of historical information.

------
dogma1138
What was the case about?

Overall I have some different views about this, and I'm not sure how to react
to some of the cognitive dissonance I notice.

On one hand people claim that privacy is paramount, on the other hand they
seem to not question what and how becomes a public record, how it is kept and
how easily it is accessible.

Overall the tone here seems to be that the "right to know" is as important or
even more important than privacy which is a huge cognitive dissonance in my
book.

What's worse is that this seem to be a case where privilege prevails, if you
are wealthy you can expunge your record the old fashion way - PR and control
the news cycle.

If you are not then you are screwed because the 15min of fame are the only
thing that the "internet" as a collective seem to care about.

I don't know what happened at the restaurant nor do I know if it was important
at the time or if it is still now but relevance can be assigned an expiration
date.

The problem is that you can't "update" the internet, a newspaper isn't going
to report that everything is nominal and that nothing happens, news by
definition are a record of an abnormal event.

I can understand not wanting to have the top result of your restaurant being
"4 puppies and a cat found dead, drugs and sign of sexual activity were
discovered at the scene" being the top result in Google simply because there
has been no "worse" news for the past 2-3 years about the same place.

For the most part I can agree with the concept of having to reevaluate the
worth of information at a given time and evaluate does it deem the information
"newsworthy" and within the public's right to know, anything else is a matter
of historic record and gossip and it can still have effect on you today since
no one is looking at the date.

What happens if some one else buys the restaurant? If the case was due to the
misconduct of the previous owner should they be forced to change the name?
Should the original owner be forced to rebrand just because something shitty
happened at the place outside of their control that has no relevance to the
performance of the restaurant or the safety of it's patrons today?

Not everything is an important record, saying "you don't know what is
important to history" is silly, we can all agree that a war, a presidential
election, a huge economic event, a scientific discovery etc. are more
important to history than a random local crime or some other misconduct, we
can also agree that not having everything available for immediate public
access does not equate rewriting history.

Overall the 1984 comments are a bit silly, and are a false equivalency no one
is claiming that historic public record should be rewritten, no one is
claiming that some information should always be accessible, but claiming that
information should be accessible regardless of how much damage vs benefit it
does at any given time, and stripping all agency from the individual to
control how information is published does not bode well for privacy.

Maybe Facebook should make everything accessible including things you delete,
and if you say well Facebook isn't a newspaper then that argument holds less
water every day since Facebook is now aggregating and generating news, and if
you claim that you as an individual are not a public figure well how famous do
you need to be to count as one? own a business? be a mayor? a celebrity? a
government official? rich enough?

This is an argument that we desperately need to have and is is a very good
sign that this case has been brought up (not necessarily the outcome) because
we do need new rules. Being able to effectively "dox" anyone at a push of a
button is going to be a big problem, and if you can about privacy and the real
definition of it not the current confusion of privacy and secrecy; which is
the agency you have to control what and whom you share information with you
should care about this, as much if not more than you care about encryption and
other technical controls.

