Comment by axanoeychron | Hacker News Reader

Comment by axanoeychron | Hacker News Reader

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That is a contrived example. In your example, the information would be kept, the fact the property was foreclosed would probably be stored in a cabinet or computer system in an office somewhere. You would make an effort to seek out and obtain that information legally and with justifiable cause. (To prove your ownership.) It would not be publicly accessible for the world to see for there is no reason for it to be. It would be a bit like medical records.

The core part of the argument to the right to be forgotten is to treat some pieces of information as medical information, i.e, private or not your concern. Things that you would rather not be known for they bestow little benefit to you except for you to profit at my expense. A lot of people find this uncomfortable, for good reason.

Should divorce cases be completely public?

> The core part of the argument to the right to be forgotten is to treat some pieces of information as medical information

That sounds great, but this case clearly shows that's not the case at all. This is information that can be widely and freely reported, just not by everyone. A newspaper could run it as their front page story every day, but some other people can't report it, and, in fact, can't even tell you the fact that someone else is saying something related to the topic you're searching for. That's something very different than treating it as private data.

One thing about restricting public disclosures to established news organizations, as had been the case prior to the advent of the Web, is that there's a distinctly limited bandwidth for this. While _an_ individual could be smeared, the ability to do so on a mass basis was distinctly limited.

I haven't read the EU decision yet, nor have I made up my mind as to whether or not it does or doesn't have merits. In general I subscribe to the principle that there's a proportionality appropriate to disclosure: that the greater a person's (or institution's) power and responsibility, the greater the obligation for disclosure of relevant details of their life, most particularly as it might affect others (individuals, organizations, government(s), etc.).

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