Simon
What Bill Dutton may say in a debate with others from Oxford Faculty of Law can be tactical or rethorical or a surely interesting, legitimate attempt in order to either obfuscate the role the Oxford Internet Institute has had in establishing such horribilis pure legal nonsense (the so called 'right to be forgotten') OR to attract the blame in what is a 'straw man' exercise very common among sociologists and psychologists working for / with / within the media industry.
In fact, Oxford Internet Institute under the previous Director, that was (coincidentally?) Prof Dutton, has had influence on Viviane Reding and others working at the European Commission. Bill Dutton endorsed such horribilis 'right to be forgotten', promoted through Viktor Mayer-Schönberger engagement. The last - who works now fulltime at Oxford Internet Institute - wrote a book, 'Delete', and promoted other initiatives specifically aimed at establishing among european stakeholders and opinion makers such a defective notion.
I was almost the only one to express criticism on it about three / two years ago, when I attended many OII open events and seminars (I have been researching myself this area of studies and business developments since the early 1990s and for many years, before the creation of the OII, I had been among the few people in Europe writing and speaking about internet and media politics, as a consultant, self-employed and independent scholar as well. Then the sociologists' wave came in, covering the 'academic' space of 'internet studies' that they had found almost deserted by both the 'media and cultural studies' and the IT and network engineering people working in european universities).
So all in all it is very good news if now Bill Dutton has changed his mind and he is skeptical about the pure nonsense idea that a right to be forgotten should be established against the right to remember, to be remembered right and to manage personal information according to data protection principles or records management standards. But I tend to interpret his position as instrumental, he is just playing a role in his team game - and I would not be surprised to see my words once again copied (or, as they prefer to say, echoed or reused) by Bill Dutton, by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger or by others working at the OII, but bear in mind the same words may have very diverse political meaning and intention.
Brunella Longo
Information Management Adviser
http://www.brunellalongo.co.uk
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