US Activists Oppose US Govt Calls To Weaken EU Privacy Rules 151
judgecorp writes "The European Commission has proposals for data privacy (including the 'right to be forgotten') and the U.S. government is opposing them. Now U.S. activists have arrived in Brussels to lobby against their government's opposition to the European measures. The move comes following reports of 'extreme' lobbying by U.S. authorities against the European proposals."
Although the "right to be forgotten" raises some free speech issues, it doesn't seem like a bad idea in principle.
Not a pretty sight (Score:5, Insightful)
Extreme lobbying, such as employed in Iraq, etc., etc?
Re:a little consistency (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait... so today it's OK for people to be in control of what happens to their data?
But step back a few stories and when it's a song or movie, it's no longer up to the person who created it whether it ends up copied all around the world for free, and they have no right to stop other people from copying it?
I think the point of this discussion is that European Commission gets to decide on laws in Europe. And U.S. should pretty much stay out of it. This is completely irrespective of what actual rules are being considered.
Re:Fortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
The fear the US may have is that at some point down the road the EU may try to go after US companies to force them to obey its rules. It's one thing to say "Facebook.de must delete every evidence of a user's existence upon their request", but what happens if the EU is trying to say "Facebook.com must delete every evidence of a user's existence upon their request."
Beyond that, there are some limits to how far you could ever apply this "forget me" notion. I'm sitting in North America, running a listserv that has people from the US, Canada, Europe, a couple of Asian countries and Australia on it. The listserv has an archive dating back to about 2002 and there are copies of that archive all over the bloody place. If I suddenly were faced with requests from my European users to start deleting every post they made, it would be an arduous and ultimate futile process. We'd be talking about deleting not only their posts, but posts that contain excerpts from their posts. Worst of all, it would ruin the continuity of the archive, which may be of significant value (I've found myself going back several years to hunt down information).
Obviously this law is targeted at Google, Facebook, Twitter et al. But what it ultimately comes to encompass is ludicrous, and I sure hope that the US, where my stuff is based, does not go down such an extremist road.
Re:Not a pretty sight (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you feel the same way about Piers Morgan advocating against our Second Amendment? He is not a U.S. citizen and he has no vote here. He may not be threatening extreme violence or such, but he is sticking his nose in where it doesn't belong.
You silly nincompoop, can't you even see the difference between a government sticking its nose where it doesn't belong, and a guy (a journalist) expressing his opinion ?
When free speech of US citizens is directly affect (Score:4, Insightful)
As an EU person (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen more good rulings come out of EU than the US. With no in-depth information on a subject, I would more trust the EU with my person (/personal information) than the US (Government/US companies)...
As an American (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wish we would adopt the European standards on privacy. This is one area where I freely admit the Euro's are doing things right and we are blatantly being ass backwards about things.
Re:Not a pretty sight (Score:5, Insightful)
As the OP I am now forced to explain that I was being facetious. If you didn't get it, then I pity you.
Nevertheless, there is a serious intent in highlighting that Americans seem to feel it is their god-given right to tell others how to run their business. This used to be great when Americans still believed in their own Bill of Rights and felt that the rest of the world would benefit from the same. But now they have been turned into sniveling cowards by a bunch of barbarians, they are happy to trample anything that sticks up.
Re:Not a pretty sight (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between speaking out on another country's foreign policy, and heavily lobbing its government and private actors to push for what you want.