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Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

No, the biggest obsession you seem to have from your multiple comments in this thread is some sort of belief in absolute justice. Without the ability to forget our past mistakes, we are forever defined by them. You seem to be begging for that to happen.

You want to destroy someone's life forever. Everyone needs a chance to rehabilitate, whether or not they were guilty or successfully prosecuted or not.

Does it matter that this man wants to forget whatever shame this caused him?

I actually find it disgraceful that you have deliberately used his name in two of your comments. At the time of writing almost 10% of comments in this thread are from you.

What has happened to you to make you so broken and incapable of forgiveness?

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My problem is that he's kicking and screaming in the courts, trying to make the fact that he had a tax dispute go away. Had he said nothing, I doubt anyone, even in his hometown would have cared all that much about the issue. Instead, he's chosen to bully people into removing facts about him because they're no longer convenient to him. Everyone makes mistakes, lord knows I have, but part of learning from them, and rehabilitation, is admitting that mistakes do happen, which this man seems incapable of.

I use his name because I'm tired of seeing well-heeled individuals throw their weight around in the court system. I use his name because he wishes to subvert public discourse. I use his name because he has chosen to make himself a public figure with his suit. Why should I respect someone who has chosen to disrespect the concepts of free speech, of open government, and of a fair society?

>I use his name because I'm tired of seeing well-heeled individuals throw their weight around in the court system.

Are you comparing the resources of a single individual against that of Google? Is the guy a billionaire?

>Had he said nothing, I doubt anyone, even in his hometown would have cared all that much about the issue.

Well, it would've been present for anyone to google. How much faith do you have in your capacity to defend well page-ranked libellous information against yourself? Part of rehabilitation is also not being permanently associated with your mistakes.

If your private financial information was published online, you should have the legal right to have it removed.

Private financial information does not belong online.

Do you believe, for example, your bank should have the legal right to publish the historical accounts of all of its customers tomorrow? Should that be protected by the right to free speech?

Almost nobody would think that was acceptable, because private information is private. Data Protection of private data is a legal idea that we generally accept in Europe, even if we don't do a good job of enforcing it (as perhaps we haven't here).

You should also have a right to legal access that would allow you to ensure your legal rights were upheld without worrying about the cost, but that is a separate issue which is really nothing to do with this guy.

> Without the ability to forget our past mistakes, we are forever defined by them.

On the other hand, it will never be possible for all such people to cover-up all such information about them. So the real solution (a societal recognition that no one is perfect) is still required.

If anything it would be easier for the truly crooked to pass off as "reformed".

> Without the ability to forget our past mistakes, we are forever defined by them. You seem to be begging for that to happen.

Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. If anything, we should be pulling for a system for undesired past information to be easily correlated with subsequent information (an ability to comment on a search result, perhaps?)... Not a world where we try and erase or bury the past. To do so is to damage truth itself.

We should address the problem of partial correlation with better correlation, not less correlation.

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