We have been taught that once something is in the public domain, it is public. There is no going back from public to "not public" anymore. In my experience, there have been some exceptions, like the information released by people like Edward Snowden, which the government insists is still classified, in spite of its publication by newspapers around the world. There is no logic to that.
Most of the time, when a person is convicted of a crime, that conviction stands as public information. What we see with the EU ruling against Google, sets a new standard for judging that thought.
The Court of Justice of the European Union, decided to say that it was up to Google to allow people who thought they had information that was old, inaccurate or irrelevant to exclude that information from searches conducted by Google. [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27394751]
The BBC says half of the first people to make these requests were criminals. Some of the other examples were people who had a bad incident in their past and didn't want people to know about it, including a politician who was running for office and wanted people to forget his history, and a guy who tried to kill members of his own family [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27439194 ].
Somewhere along the way, they seem to be missing something important about the data that Google collects in a search. It is already public.
Taking data from a Google search will not make it "not public". If I go to every court, in every jurisdiction, I could find every conviction ever made. Is the court saying that information cannot be posted on a website that shows convictions? Is there to be a statue of limitations on information about convictions? That is not going to come out of this kind of ruling, but something else will.
I know we are supposed to forgive a person who commits a crime, but are we also supposed to forget it too? Think about that. Information is relevant to choices I make about a politician, my neighbor, or people who work with me. I want to know that guy across the street is a child molester, or at least he was once or twice. If was 8 years ago, I would take that into consideration, but still want to know. I certainly don't want the person who was convicted, making the decision about whether the information was old, irrelevant, or inaccurate. That child molester or murderer will think it is. Amazon books:
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