Pianist Asks Washington Post To Remove Review Under "Right To Be Forgotten" 257
Goatbert writes with word that pianist Dejan Lazic, unhappy with the opinion of Post music critic Anne Midgette, "has asked the Washington Post to remove an old review from their site in perhaps the best example yet of why it is both a terrible ruling and concept."
It’s the first request The Post has received under the E.U. ruling. It’s also a truly fascinating, troubling demonstration of how the ruling could work. “To wish for such an article to be removed from the internet has absolutely nothing to do with censorship or with closing down our access to information,” Lazic explained in a follow-up e-mail to The Post. Instead, he argued, it has to do with control of one’s personal image — control of, as he puts it, “the truth.”
(Here is the 2010 review to which Lazic objects.)
its terrible (Score:5, Informative)
when the pianist succeeds. This is clearly a case where the "right to be forgotten" conflicts public interest.
Re:its terrible (Score:5, Insightful)
It won't work. We have a First Amendment here. Any law seeking to restrain the press from reporting news can't be enforced.
Re:its terrible (Score:4, Insightful)
It wont work because the whole summary and story is 50 shades of wrong in the first place.
Time and time again the same FUD against the 1995 European Data Protection Directive (that often being referred to incorrectly as "the right to be forgotten") seems to get parroted here on Slashdot but it's completely wrong.
A review of someone's work is not, has never been, and will never be classed as personal data, and hence eligible for removal under the data protection directive, or even the proposed actual "right to be forgotten".
It'd be nice if the people bitching about this whole thing actually understood it but time and time again the only arguments against it are from those people who think it's something that it's categorically not so we end up with summarys on Slashdot like this which are just completely wrong.
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Re:its terrible (Score:5, Insightful)
It won't work in Europe either. He sent the request to the newspaper, not the search engine. Newspapers are protected by the public record defence. Google would tell him to sod off as well, because the article is clearly relevant and current.
We really need to stop reacting to every idiot making these requests. I get hundreds of moronic DMCA requests a year from mindless fools who don't even realize that I'm not in the US and the law doesn't apply to me. I don't even have a .us domain name. I don't post articles to Slashdot about how my rights are being infringed by spam DMCA requests that I don't even read, even though it's a stupid law and violates many of the freedoms we enjoy in Europe.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Ferguson No-Fly Zone Revealed As Anti-Media Tactic [slashdot.org]
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the cultural marxist media
What does this even mean?
Re: (Score:2)
Oh god it's spreading outside of Sweden.
I thought this was a local fad among Swedish nazis, but apparently it's something more.
These people toss around the label liberally.
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The Washington Post can just ignore the EU. The EU has no authority to enforce this short of making a Chinese style firewall blocking the Washington Post everywhere in the EU.
Well it can fine any operations in Europe.
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The what?
It's always terrible (Score:3)
when the pianist succeeds. This is clearly a case where the "right to be forgotten" conflicts public interest.
That is every case. The winners rewriting the history books is a bad thing, period, the end. There are no exceptions.
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we accept similar 'right to be forgotten' in other areas.
e.g. juvenile criminal record is sealed, e.g. minor criminal offences no longer appear in criminal record check after x years.
Now a private investigator may be able to dig up dirt by trawling old newspaper archives - but for the most part, (pre internet), the person is able to move on without everyone knowing about these past mistakes.
There is an analogous argument to be made here. Is it really fair that when you search for info on 50yr old electrici
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I'm not for a moment saying that the eu 'right to be forgotten' makes sense, just saying that you can make a reasonable argument for a limited right.
If we're going to continue to draw an arbitrary line defining maturity, then you're right, it does make some sense to put it there.
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I think you can argue for an age threshold as well. Should my 50yr old self really be perpetually reminded about the idiocy of my 25yr old self?
Yes. That way, you'll be less likely to judge 25 year olds unfairly.
Re:its terrible (Score:5, Informative)
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Of course there should be and just like with freedom of speech there should be some limitations. The problem is that there's a much larger amount of information about people out there and no way of understanding how it all fits together and is interpreted by the people who control the databases.
In this case, it's rather absurd for him to claim that this isn't censorship when it's highly unlikely that he would have requested the take down if the information had been complimentary. Instead his "truth" is almo
Nothing new here (Score:5, Interesting)
The winners have always been able to rewrite history to suit them. These (very) few years of the Internet keeping semi-accurate track have been an anomaly. It isn't a given that it will be allowed to continue.
Orwell was an optimist.
Re:its terrible (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is ever "clearly". The pianist could argue that he's greatly improved since then and thus the post is now wrong, outdated, and unduly hurts the pianist. Therefore it's in the public interest to remove that terrible post from the internet.
Then the artist should invite the Post reviewer to his next concert and ask the Post to amend the review by adding a link to a new article describing how the artist has improved.
Re:its terrible (Score:4, Funny)
Then the artist should invite the Post reviewer to his next concert ...
The very first notes ... signalled that he can do anything he wants at the keyboard, detailing chords with a jeweler's precision, then laying little curls of notes atop a cushion of sound like diamonds nestled on velvet ...
Invite that reviewer?! Seriously, having read the review one is surprised it is not the reviewer attempting to assert her right to be forgotten.
As many have pointed out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. Remove the Google link to the bad review.
And every other link to the guy. Forever.
No more searches on him, for the entire rest of his performing career.
It's the only way to keep that review from sneaking back into future search results.
Re:As many have pointed out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your reading skills are seriously lacking. The pianist has asked the Washington Post to remove the review. Not google. The Washington Post.
From what I read of the orginal ruling that created the right to be forgotten, it is not applicable to the original publisher (in this case the WP), only search engines like Google.
I suggest that Mr. Lazic has a discussion with Ms. Streisand. He might find it enlightening.
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Subject: Two Words
Comment: Two words: Streisand Effect.
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Providing a link to the review was genius.
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A course of action that is obvious to an intelligent observer is not usually considered a work of "genius".
And yes, it was an obvious thing to do... and perhaps you're new here.
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Actually, my reading skills are fine. It's his legal skills that are in a world of hurt.
For one thing, the actual complaint is that the bad review keeps turning up on the first page of his Google results. For another, the "right to be forgotten" was aimed at search engines, not content providers. Asking the Post to remove the review is, of course, way off base, legally.
He decided to use it to try and lose a bad review through using the RtbF as a censorship tool.
So everyone - yes, EVERYONE - should oblige hi
Re:As many have pointed out... (Score:5, Informative)
No that's not even close to what the ruling is about. The ruling doesn't relate to the right to be forgotten, contrary to the media repeatedly getting this wrong.
The ruling relates to the 1995 European Data Protection Directive which EU member states have all I believe implemented. The UK's implementation for example is the 1998 Data Protection Act for example.
What the act says, is that organisations (such as companies, charities) cannot hold personal data on people unless there is:
1) Prior agreement- e.g. you agree to let your bank hold your personal details when you open your account.
2) An exception under law, such as the police doing investigations, or credit reference agencies holding credit reference data.
3) A public interest/public record defence, such as a newspaper reporting on the bankruptcy of a public figure.
The data protection has existed and been applied this way to most companies since it's creation - i.e. in the UK since 1998 for example. When I worked with some recruitment agencies previously I gave them my CV, phone number, name, e-mail address etc. some years back. I have since had contact from other agencies whom I did not give these details too, likely someone stole them when they left and took them to their new employer or similar as is typical in that industry. Because I wasn't interested in these other recruiters the data protection act is what allowed me to tell them to cease all contact and delete every bit of information they have on me - I had agreed to no relationship with them, and I had made clear to those I originally gave my details to that they were not to be passed on under any circumstances. This is a good thing, the law empowered me to deal with data theft that resulted in me being pestered against my will.
The only thing that the recent ruling changed is that the judge simply ruled that the law does in fact apply to Google- for some reason Google has until this point felt that it's above the law and that because it uses lazy algorithms to simply harvest as much data as possible, slap adverts on that data and profit off of it that somehow the law didn't apply to it. The original newspaper article about the bankruptcy did not have to delete it because a newspaper can perform public record duties. Google on the other hand has no such protection, it does not produce public record, it simply harvests data from other sites (including those that do produce public record) and profits off of it to the tune of many billions in ad revenue.
This is why the ruling went against Google- because it's not special, the law does apply to it, because it's not creating public record content but simply copying it from those that do, and because in doing so it was storing personal data that the subject in question did not agree to let Google have.
If Google simply provided a blind link to the article in question there would've been no ruling against it, but the fact that it takes a copy of the article and provides a snippet alongside the link is where it fell foul - at this point it was clearly holding personal data without any legal right to do so.
The actual right to be forgotten is a proposed provision in an update to the European Data Protection Directive that is not yet law. If Google wishes for a search engine exemption the time to lobby for it is now, but criticising existing law which is 16 years old and which just about every other company has implemented and followed is monumentally stupid. Google is not and should not be above the law. The proposal in the 2012 refresh of the law (2012 is just when the process started, it's not finished yet) explicitly lays out the fact that the right to be forgotten cannot be used to censor arbitrarily such that although that's how the law is being applied now, it proposes making it more explicit in law.
So it's not about creating the right to be forgotten, it's not about publisher and links, it's simply a reiteration that yes, the law applies to Google like it does everyone. You can think
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Your retelling of the legal situation is accurate, but it does not make it right. For starters Google (in the context of the search engine, not plus or ads) is not collecting data about you but about the websites. This includes the indexed content of the website. This is the only way a search engine can work. Search engines are an essential part of the internet, without it would barley work. (It will work, but you will not find much.)
To make a real world example. Say I produce some widget and sell it wholes
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it could easily apply the same to personal data to be flagged
Please do enlighten us how it could easily apply algorithms to categorize data to distinguish between personal, protected data, and data of public records that belong to someone else. Just for shits and grins, please create an algorithm that would distinguish between the Washington Post article and the original bankruptcy article.
It's perfectly possible to have both- no one is expecting perfection, but ultimately just because Google may never get it perfectly right doesn't mean they should be freed from the law altogether.
Wow. So that means that now laws that cannot be followed every time are a good idea? In the case of Google, it means a perpetual fine that cannot be escaped, is completely arbitrar
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In my view, once information about you is published by a news organization (and legally), it is part of the public record, and is no longer "your" personal information.
The original request that started all this was from a guy who was bankrupt many years ago. In most European country bankruptcy can only be reported by credit reference agencies for a limited period of time. After that the person is considered rehabilitated and it is wiped off their slate. It allows people to recover from financial mistakes and become productive members of society again, and if they keep screwing up then the new screw-ups will keep their bad record rolling on forever anyway.
Google is not exe
Re:As many have pointed out... (Score:5, Funny)
It's nice that there's now an official mechanism for invoking the Streisand Effect.
Re: As many have pointed out... (Score:2)
Did anyone think it wouldn't work this way ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Overwhelmingly you are going to have people with mis deeds wanting to have those deleted from history. Just imagine the Enron principals decide to emigrate and have their histories expunged ?
Re:Did anyone think it wouldn't work this way ? (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of people with similar histories have asked Google the same thing, and have been denied.
http://www.google.com/transpar... [google.com]
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Except it doesn't work this way. A review of a performance isn't personal data and isn't protected by any law in the EU hence the summary is completely wrong.
The right to be forgotten similarly doesn't allow Enron execs to erase their history because it's a prominent piece of historical public information.
The ruling and law do not in any way demand that this information to be censored, any suggestions to the contrary are simply FUD. If anyone is censoring this information on their service then that's wholly
/wiki/Streisand_effect (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if they are knowedgable of the Streisand effect and the Slashdot effect. If not, they will know now. LOL. The news of the request is more important news than any old review they were trying to escape.
/wiki/Streisand_effect (Score:4, Insightful)
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I suspect this was the former rather than the latter.
Dejan, meet Barbara (Score:2)
Then you were unknown; now you're universally known as The Bad Pianist.
No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm shocked, I tell you.
I wonder when (Score:2)
Alessandra Mussolini [wikipedia.org] will petition the EU for the right of her grandfather (Benito [wikipedia.org]) to be forgotten? Lots of negative comments out there about him.
Cheers,
Dave
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It's not the "right to be forgotten", that's something else entirely. It's the media that called it that, and the media that has lead people to believe that they can use it to get things they don't like removed from the internet.
The truth is that it is actually quite a narrow, and well established principal that has applied to all companies for over 15+ years now. It's just that Google was ignoring it, until told not to by the court. It can't be used to remove random negative comments or reviews, it has a v
Sparks but no flame: Pianist Dejan Lazic at Kenned (Score:5, Informative)
Grandiloquence is an occupational hazard for a solo musician. There you are, alone onstage, playing works that are acknowledged to be monumentally great with breathtaking ability. It can be hard to avoid assuming the trappings of greatness.
Exhibit A is Dejan Lazic, who made his Washington debut Saturday afternoon as part of the Washington Performing Arts Society's Hayes Piano Series at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater. Lazic, 33, is a pianist, composer and sometime clarinetist. A few years ago, he made a strong mark as a performing partner of cellist Pieter Wispelwey. More recently, his claim to fame was turning Brahms's violin concerto into something dubbed "Piano Concerto No. 3," which he recorded with the Atlanta Symphony earlier this year. The feat ranks somewhere on the "because it's there" spectrum of human achievement: attention-getting, large scale and a little empty.
His recital of Chopin and Schubert on Saturday was unfortunately on the same spectrum. The selection of those two composers is usually a way to demonstrate a pianist's sensitivity as well as his virtuosity. This performance, though, kept one eye fixed on monumentality. Some of the pieces, such as Chopin's Scherzo No. 2, sounded less like light solo piano works than an attempt to rival the volume of a concerto with full orchestra. This scherzo became cartoon-like in its lurches from minutely small to very, very large.
It's not that Lazic isn't sensitive - or profoundly gifted. The very first notes of Chopin's Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante at the start of the program signalled that he can do anything he wants at the keyboard, detailing chords with a jeweler's precision, then laying little curls of notes atop a cushion of sound like diamonds nestled on velvet. Again and again, throughout the afternoon, he showed what a range of colors he could get out of the instrument, switching from hard-edged percussiveness to creamy legato, crackling chords to a single thread of sound. The sheer technical ability was, at first, a delight.
Soon, though, all of the finesse started to seem like an end in itself. Every nuance of the music was underlined visibly with a host of concert-pianist playacting gestures: head flung back at the end of a phrase; left hand conducting the right hand; or a whole ballet of fingers hovering over keys and picking out their targets before an opening note was even struck at the start of Chopin's Ballade No. 3. There were fine moments, but they stubbornly refused to add up to anything more than a self-conscious display of Fine Moments. The final movement of Chopin's Second Piano Sonata was in a way the most successful part of the program: sheer virtuosity, and perfectly unhinged.
Schubert's B-flat Sonata, D. 960, was a chance to shift into another gear and show a more reflective side, but it was a chance Lazic didn't quite take. The notes, again, were exquisitely placed, and there were things to like, but the human side fell short. All of the precision didn't help bring across the lyricism of the first movement's theme, or the threat of the bass growl that keeps warning off ease from the bottom of the keyboard. The second movement, instead of being a searching, tugging quest, was reduced to merely very pretty music.
The pianist was received with reasonably warm applause, but it didn't last long enough to draw an encore - which ought to get his attention. He's a pianist of prodigious gifts, and he's too good not to do better, to move beyond the music's challenges and into the realm of its soul.
Re:Sparks but no flame: Pianist Dejan Lazic at Ken (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who actually laughed out loud at the utter pretentiousness of this review?
detailing chords with a jeweler's precision, then laying little curls of notes atop a cushion of sound like diamonds nestled on velvet.
Amazing. It tells me absolutely nothing except that the writer is in love with her own prose. It's a shame Mr. Lazic couldn't see this review with the proper humor and irreverence it deserves. I think I'd wear it as a badge of honor if I was criticized with this sort of pomposity. Instead, he's gone and done something for which he should be rightfully shamed - much worse than an apparently decent but lackluster performance.
Re:Sparks but no flame: Pianist Dejan Lazic at Ken (Score:4, Insightful)
But Midgette's pretensious prose parrots Lazic's performance, presumably.
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I've seen a game I worked on reviewed by someone who obviously had no interested in reviewing it seriously. That game represented nearly two years of very hard work for me and a reasonably sized team of developers. I'm pretty sure the reviewer shat out that review in a few hours. Of course, since the game was in a genre he admittedly didn't care for to begin with, he not surprisingly didn't find it to his liking, and instead peppered the review with lame and bizarre jokes.
Yeah, reviews are sometimes hars
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Heh, yeah, it was IGN. I hope you don't mind, but I'd rather not say, as I'd prefer to stay somewhat anonymous. Plus, I don't want to bring my personal biases into things and draw more attention to the review itself, which I think is exactly the mistake I think Lazic made.
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...in a few hours.
Not to argue with you, considering I know a grand total of nothing about your situation, but how long do you expect the guy to spend on the review? A few hours doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
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I was sort of including actually playing the game in that figure. Honestly, it wasn't a terrible review (7/10), but you could sort of tell the reviewer was sort of bored and rambling about a lot of non-related stuff, making bad puns, etc. It's just a bit frustrating when you've spent two years of your life working on something... well, you'd hope that whoever reviews your product at least makes a pretense at taking it seriously.
The point I was trying to make is, there's nothing you can do about it. Revie
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That's a little bit more than fair use, and you didn't credit your source. So I guess it's copyright violation and plagiarism. That may have to be removed from this website, if the Washington Post objects to it.
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The problem of course comes not when you download it, but when it's placed on a /. server so that people can dowload it from there, rather than from the WaPo site. This is, like, remedial piracy.
Re:Sparks but no flame: Pianist Dejan Lazic at Ken (Score:4, Insightful)
I've heard Lazic's recitals, and I must say, this review perfectly describes them. All of them. The man is talented, certainly, but fails to produce even the slightest musical effect on the listener. His play is a waste of great pianistic control - all that control and virtuosism bring about nothing of substantial value.
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A combination of hitting the right notes at the right time properly, and a personal touch that inspires emotional responses.
I'm not that discriminator (or anal) and put it into the category of how much I like it or not.
It sounds to me like that reviewer was saying his technical skill is high, but his ability to inspire emotions is either lacking, or sometimes aimed at the wrong ones.
Heck,
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The music as it is written is an imprecise rendering of the composer's intent. He or she intends it to be played a certain way and can't fully describe it in musical notation. It's like the script of a play. How the artist plays the notes or says the words matters. The performer that plays it is supposed to discern the intent and represent it, but is (perhaps by intent but unavoidably anyway), evoking the style and expression that were in the composer's mind. It is possible for an expert performer to e
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I think a perfect example is the recordings of Wilhelm Kempff of Beethoven sonatas. You can find some with video on Youtube - on those there's an occasional misplaced note (it's an old man playing), yet the music is... beyond this world.
Take a MIDI-playback directly from the notes written by Beethoven and compare that to Kempff's performance.
Technical ability is the means to an end.
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A combination of hitting the right notes
But not necessarily in the right order. [youtube.com]
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I've heard Lazic's recitals, and I must say, this review perfectly describes them. All of them. The man is talented, certainly, but fails to produce even the slightest musical effect on the listener. His play is a waste of great pianistic control - all that control and virtuosism bring about nothing of substantial value.
You'll be getting RtbF notice next.
to paraphrase Oscar Wilde (Score:2)
It's the pompous writing about the self-important.
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From the text, it looks like the critic's whole job is to say that the performance was flawed, no matter how skilled it was, in as loquacious a manner as possible.
My /. take down request ... (Score:3)
... I want /. to take down any posts where I have been called an asshole.
tyvm
Public image created by public, not owned by you. (Score:5, Insightful)
You do NOT have a RIGHT to control your public image. A public image is something that emerges from HOW you perform in public.
You do NOT have a RIGHT to not have your religion, beliefs, politics offended.
You CAN be just as misguided, idiotic, self absorbed as you want to be as long as I am not forced to change my behaviors to accommodate your stupid world views.
The way I see it, I DO have the RIGHT to see, believe, read, write, learn, say, do what I want want if it doesn't interfere with someone else's right to do the same. If you do not agree with that, then we have a problem.
I don't know ... (Score:5, Informative)
... you do make some BOLD uppercase statements.
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I would
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True, you do not have a right to control the view of your public image. However, though I think âoeRight to be forgotten" is not how he should be going about ie, it would be okay for him to sue her for slander.
That should be a heads-up to her, that he grandiloquence is out of control. It also occurs to me that if anyone should be suing to be forgotten, it should be her: her essay was not only graceless, it went overboard with gracelessness. She could have been much more discreet -- praised his skill, n
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Only someone very clueless would think slander has the slightest bit to do with OPINION.
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Slander? What statements were made that were a) facts and b) untrue? Also, I believe you meant 'libel', as this is in print.
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Whoops. I missed the part where the person you were replying to said slander. I thus interpreted your comment exactly backward--it should apply to the person you responded to, not you. Sorry about that!
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Guess what? He's not in elementary school, where everything he does gets a gold star. He's in the real world now, where people are free to dislike what he does, and to report on why they didn't like it.
Suck it up, buttercup.
Life isn't kind, it isn't pretty, and it isn't fair.
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People hire organizations to control their public image all the time through social media and the press. Anyone with significant funds most definitely can control their public image if they do so wish.
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Re:Public image created by public, not owned by yo (Score:5, Interesting)
The European Union disagrees.
The EU couldn't get negative rights straight if one hit it over its head.
Statists who love entitlements love to call them "rights" because "rights" have popular support.
The EU has created an entitlement to be forgotten, not a right, no matter what they call it. It's easy to tell the two apart - a right requires simply leaving a person alone - an entitlement requires a third party to provide a good or service, customarily under some threat of retribution for not doing so.
That's exactly what the EU has done - it forces somebody at the media outlet to remove a bit of data, without compensation - call it servitude or conscription, depending on your perspective, to provide a benefit to the person making the complaint.
Compare that with the right to free speech, the right to practice religion, the right to be free from searches - they all require the person to be left alone, and no third party is pressed into service.
Malarkey like TFA is what happens when people start thinking that entitlements are right - in an area where no entitlement has even been created, people who've heard about the EU's folly start thinking they have a right to another's labor. That kind of thinking is not alien to the US, though it's gone out of favor in the last century and a half, at least in the direct sense.
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The EU has created an entitlement to be forgotten
No, it hasn't. You have no idea what you are talking about.
The right to be forgotten doesn't exist yet. It is a proposal for the updated data protection laws that are being worked on at the moment. These requests come under an older law, first introduced in 1995, that allows subjects to have some control over their data.
It was necessary because the EU recognized the danger of companies having huge databases of people's personal data, and sharing it. People would be denied insurance, bank accounts, mortgages
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All Future Reviews of Dejan Lazic Should Start ... (Score:3)
.. "What a completely forgettable performance!"
There - no more need for Dejan to file "Right to be forgotten" requests.
Libel Could Work That Way, Too (Score:3)
It's also a truly fascinating, troubling demonstration of how the ruling could work.
Yes, but not of how it does work. Libel law could work exactly the same way, but it doesn't.
It is important to find cases where this ruling does cause problems, so we can amend or reverse it. Pointing out cases where it could result in legally enforced removal of information that is in the public interest, but almost certainly won't, is crying wolf and is harmful to the goal of reforming the ruling.
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Whether something "is in the public interest" is not a valid criterion for restricting free speech.
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Whether something "is in the public interest" is not a valid criterion for restricting free speech.
Of course it is. Everything is weighing up various consequences. There is the right of the public to be informed, the right of free speech, the right not to be slandered, and they have to be weighed up against each other. (Slashdot objection: But who decides? Answer: A judge who probably has a few more braincells than you).
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"Bob9113 is an awful human being."
Can't be untrue, unless Bob9113 is not, in fact, a human being.. It's a statement of opinion, not one of fact, since 'awful' is subjective.
I know my school covered fact versus opinion. Sometimes, I wonder how many other schools did.
Take this down too .. (Score:3, Informative)
Sparks but no flame: Pianist Dejan Lazic at Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater
By Anne Midgette
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 6, 2010; 5:32 PM
Grandiloquence is an occupational hazard for a solo musician. There you are, alone onstage, playing works that are acknowledged to be monumentally great with breathtaking ability. It can be hard to avoid assuming the trappings of greatness.
Exhibit A is Dejan Lazic, who made his Washington debut Saturday afternoon as part of the Washington Performing Arts Society's Hayes Piano Series at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater. Lazic, 33, is a pianist, composer and sometime clarinetist. A few years ago, he made a strong mark as a performing partner of cellist Pieter Wispelwey. More recently, his claim to fame was turning Brahms's violin concerto into something dubbed "Piano Concerto No. 3," which he recorded with the Atlanta Symphony earlier this year. The feat ranks somewhere on the "because it's there" spectrum of human achievement: attention-getting, large scale and a little empty.
His recital of Chopin and Schubert on Saturday was unfortunately on the same spectrum. The selection of those two composers is usually a way to demonstrate a pianist's sensitivity as well as his virtuosity. This performance, though, kept one eye fixed on monumentality. Some of the pieces, such as Chopin's Scherzo No. 2, sounded less like light solo piano works than an attempt to rival the volume of a concerto with full orchestra. This scherzo became cartoon-like in its lurches from minutely small to very, very large.
It's not that Lazic isn't sensitive - or profoundly gifted. The very first notes of Chopin's Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante at the start of the program signalled that he can do anything he wants at the keyboard, detailing chords with a jeweler's precision, then laying little curls of notes atop a cushion of sound like diamonds nestled on velvet. Again and again, throughout the afternoon, he showed what a range of colors he could get out of the instrument, switching from hard-edged percussiveness to creamy legato, crackling chords to a single thread of sound. The sheer technical ability was, at first, a delight.
Soon, though, all of the finesse started to seem like an end in itself. Every nuance of the music was underlined visibly with a host of concert-pianist playacting gestures: head flung back at the end of a phrase; left hand conducting the right hand; or a whole ballet of fingers hovering over keys and picking out their targets before an opening note was even struck at the start of Chopin's Ballade No. 3. There were fine moments, but they stubbornly refused to add up to anything more than a self-conscious display of Fine Moments. The final movement of Chopin's Second Piano Sonata was in a way the most successful part of the program: sheer virtuosity, and perfectly unhinged.
Schubert's B-flat Sonata, D. 960, was a chance to shift into another gear and show a more reflective side, but it was a chance Lazic didn't quite take. The notes, again, were exquisitely placed, and there were things to like, but the human side fell short. All of the precision didn't help bring across the lyricism of the first movement's theme, or the threat of the bass growl that keeps warning off ease from the bottom of the keyboard. The second movement, instead of being a searching, tugging quest, was reduced to merely very pretty music.
The pianist was received with reasonably warm applause, but it didn't last long enough to draw an encore - which ought to get his attention. He's a pianist of prodigious gifts, and he's too good not to do better, to move beyond the music's challenges and into the realm of its soul.
The saddest thing about this (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, obviously English isn't his first language, and second, I didn't see anything "defamatory" from an American standpoint in the review, which takes more than stating your opinion.
Especially when it comes to reviews, actually. There are known reviewers out there who have a thing against giving a 'perfect' review, they feel the need to come up with something negative.
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He has a British agent; I assume they wrote most of it, and I assume they speak English (of sorts).
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That wasn't even proper British English.
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I know! Dejan was a perfectly cromulent donkey intervarsity whinglebat drapes!
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I don't know the current stage of professional development of this pianist, but there are two main possibilities: either he's not improved since the review, or he has.
I have last heard him in 2013. At least up until that point, he has not improved. If anything, he's crystallized into that interesting, virtuoso but ultimately empty style that the review very well described. His recitals showcase his incredible control of the instrument, but leave the audience completely unfulfilled, with no real musical experience to speak of.
Kind of appropriate, I guess (Score:2, Insightful)
It wasn't even a bad review. I mean, it wasn't a *wonderful* review, but it still said that the pianist was incredibly proficient at his craft; he just needs to stop being fixated on impressing everyone with how good he is every single minute and allow for some calmness, some reflection, and some humility.
So, appropriately enough, the self-obsessed twerp is complaining that the review wasn't good enough for his tastes.
Selective.... I say not. (Score:3)
If he wants to be forgotten then "forget him".
Invoking the right to be forgotten should not be selective.
Flush it all and let us not visit this again.
Backfire? (Score:2)
Did anybody notice...the linked article about the removal request...was a Washington Post article? And this article prominently displays a link to the original review. It doesn't seem the request for removal is having the desired effect.
From being obscure to being world famous. (Score:4, Insightful)
Dejan Lazic went from being obscure to being world famous for the wrong reason, now he will remain in the memories of people as a person not able to take criticism.
How many did know of him before this story?
Who will hire him for a concert now?
If I wanted an obnoxious person-centered musician with an ego the size of Mount Everest I would hire Prince [youtube.com].
If I wanted a piano player that is fun to watch I'd take Robert Wells [youtube.com] instead.
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If I wanted a piano player that is fun to watch I'd take Robert Wells instead.
That was quite the performance. Odd that some of the orchestra seemed to be like, "eh, screw this", while some of them were quite clearly enjoying themselves (being completely unable to suppress shit-eating grins).
Update in the ruling (Score:2)
Hopefully cases like this will spark a discussion about updating the ruling. Like a person trying to invoke the right to be forgotten having to show a thorough effort in removing his person from the internet himself - putting down his own homepage would be a start.
This ruling was created for people in distress that are facing real-life mistreatment, stalking etc they'll be fine with shutting down their facebook profiles (that's the first thing they are going to do anyway). At the same time jokers like this
Pianist? Reminds me of a joke... (Score:2)
One day a man walks into a bar and to his amazement, he finds a tiny person playing a tiny piano. Stunned, the man asked the bartender where he got this amazing person. The bartender replied that inside the closet there is a genie that will grant him a single wish.
The man dashed into the the closet and as the bartender said, there was a genie inside. Without hesitation the man wished for a million bucks.
But instead, 1 million ducks instantly appeared, quacking up a storm and making a ruckus. Infuriated, the
Not applicable (Score:2)
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Except bad and good are entirely subjective terms.
They aren't to me...
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their involvement in the holocaust was all in the past and shouldn't effect their life now
You're right! I say we hang the bastard and prevent their life from being effected any longer!