Scrubbing The Past

at

wikiTj Mcintyre

Should politicians be able to invoke copyright in order to conceal their past promises? Asks copyright lawyer and digital rights expert TJ McIntyre (above), who adds on his blog:

Irish politicians are getting nervous. Although the government still insists it will serve out its full term, insiders are muttering about the possibility of a post-budget snap election.

It’s no coincidence, therefore, that they are now looking to clean up their online presence and two stories from this week are particularly telling.

First Alan Kinsella, of the invaluable Irish Election Literature website, tweeted (above):

Second, an anonymous user from an Oireachtas IP address attempted a systematic (but ultimately unsuccessful) whitewashing of the Wikipedia entry for Senator Jim Walsh, deleting all reference to various gaffes by him through the years.

There’s nothing new about attempts to suppress unfavourable information about Irish politicians – and the current stories are nowhere near the seriousness of the recent incident in which the aide to Derek Keating TD dumped several thousand copies of a local freesheet containing a critical story about his boss.

But these examples still raise interesting issues for lawyers. In the case of the Irish Election Literature website – should politicians be able to invoke what would presumably be a copyright argument in order to conceal their past promises?

In the case of Wikipedia, should edits made by TDs, Senators or their staff about themselves be disclosed? Wikipedia certainly thinks so.

More generally, how should Irish law deal with sites such as Politwoops which archive deleted tweets from politicians? Is Twitter correct in saying that politicians should be able to delete their ill thought out tweets without that fact being highlighted – or should we accept that what politicians say is inherently newsworthy?

The Irish courts have yet to confront most of these issues – but it will be interesting to see what happens in an ongoing case brought by a Dublin election candidate who has invoked the “right to be forgotten” against online discussion of his election literature. Hopefully this will result in a judicial statement affirming the strong public interest in political discussion.’

EDIT FIGHT!

Whitewashing Your Internet Profile (TJ McIntyre)

Thanks Nelly Bergman

Meanwhile….

90397427

This afternoon

Austrian law student Max Schrems outside the Four Courts.

Leah writes:

The High Court has quashed a decision by the Data Protection Commissioner to refuse to investigate a data privacy complaint by Max Schrems against Facebook. Max is an Austrian privacy activist who campaigns against Facebook for privacy violation, including its violations of European privacy laws and alleged transfer of personal data to the US National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the NSA’s PRISM programme…

(Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie)

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51 thoughts on “Scrubbing The Past”

  1. Mr. T.

    Fine Gael TD, Regina Doherty’s Wikipedia page was recently edited from within Leinster House to remove references to her company going bust and owing the Revenue money.

  2. Fergus the magic postman

    I’m sure we can look forward to a future version of Labour trying to scrub almost everything Joan Burton & Alan Kelly ever said while in power this term.

  4. Ms Piggy

    The ‘right to be forgotten’ story is really interesting, well worth clicking on the link to McIntyre’s blog commentary on it. Also for added reader pleasure, the subject himself pops up in the comments, apparently determined to leave as large a trail of breadcrumbs as possible across the internet :-D

  6. ahjayzis

    “Meeeeeeeeeeemory, all alone in the moonliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight
    I can dream of the old daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaays
    Life was beautiful theeeeeeeen”

    -La STREISAND

          2. Neilo

            When the as yet unborn remnants of humanity scratch their thoughts on uranium-bleached walls in a vain attempt to pinpoint the cause of Armageddon, it will be this: the Streisandanistas versus the Paigeists.

          4. ahjayzis

            As I said, i don’t engage with the unenlightened. It’s my right.

            IT’S A RIIIIIIIIIGHT I DEFEEEEEEEEND. OVER AND OVER AGAIIIIIIIIIN….

          5. Dόn Pídgéόní

            I just listened to her version. You can tell she’s singing it for the money, there’s no heart in it at all. It’s like she can’t even imagine being a dying cat singing about her dancing heydays.

          7. Dόn Pídgéόní

            Maybe she can if it’s limited to wishy 70s movies. But she has nothing to contribute to cat musicals except conjuring hairballs.

  7. Daisy Chainsaw

    Surely if someone posts a leaflet in through your letterbox it becomes your property to do with as you will – like pass on to Alan Kinsella to archive on the internet.

    You can’t blame the public for wanting to call out politicians on failed election promises and outright lies told to get elected.

    1. Neilo

      @ahjayzis & Don: *cracks open craft beer and artisan popcorn and waits for it to kick-off: two exiles enter the octagon, only one shall leave*

  8. MoyestWithExcitement

    “a decision by the Data Protection Commissioner to refuse to investigate a data privacy complaint by Max Schrems against Facebook.”

    I didn’t even hear about that. This country is just a mini version of the US. *Southern* US.

    1. Lorcan Nagle

      Not in the slightest. Broadsheet is private property, and the owners have the right to post whereby they want, to allow comments or not, and to remove comments add they see fit. If you had a blog on your own website and posted the same thing you put in the comments here, with a relevant link for reference, broadsheet couldn’t demand you remove it.

      By comparison, this is public officials attempting to whitewash their embarrassing history, to wit public statements on their alleged intents should they get into power, published on websites that they don’t own.

      1. rotide

        Think you missed my initial point Lorcan which wasn’t really anything to do with politicians.

        However you say:
        Broadsheet is private property, and the owners have the right to post whereby they want, to allow comments or not, and to remove comments add they see fit.
        The above posts bemoans twitter for acting exactly like this.

        1. Lorcan Nagle

          And Twitter hav every right to remove whatever content people post. Same as Facebook. The problem there is that Facebook (which was mentioned rather than Twitter) tend to allow famous and important people to delete their contentious comments – there’s one rule for them and one for the rest of us. By comparison, Google have a “right to forget” rule in Europe that anyone can access, though it is also problematic in terms of its implications for public figures erasing their past.

          There’s also the problem mentioned in the post that people are suing websites for copyright infringement in order to get public statements that are embarassing in hindsight removed from the internet. Many blogs and news aggregators have very low budgets and can’t afford to fight a legal battle, even though they’ll probably win in the end, so they give in to the demand to pull the material.

        1. MoyestWithExcitement

          Broadsheet do not have to protect free speech. They do have to protect themselves from being sued though.

        2. Lorcan Nagle

          Free speech is the freedom to say what you want without government persecution. It is not the right to use somebody else’s platform to spread your views if they disagree,

  11. Sparks

    Legislation should be passed that all successful candidates have their manifestoes re-published prior to their next attempt to run for office, so that they can be closely questioned on all promises and what attempts they have made to keep them.

    If elected, I shall put forward such a bill. I promise.

  13. Truth in the News

    Incidently if they made promises and never kept them and were voted into
    Public Office is that not deception and why is there not action taken to disbar
    them and make them forfeit what ever salary and expenses they were paid
    while holding offices of Public Trust.
    Oh I notice John Perry TD failed to get a nomination, have the Blueshirts ditched him

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