| kitler53 said: while the story you paint sounds very different on paper,.. the legalize of it doesn't. so no. i don't think that i should have the "right" to remove that. and i don't think you can't make a clear cut case of what is "public record". |
American courts have been drawing a difference between those two things for decades, though. There are entire torts which revolve solely around this question. See: Right to Be Let Alone.
Said laws were created when newspapers and cameras become widely available, i.e. new technology sprung up which raised new and more effective ways to violate one's "privacy." What's going on here is little different: regardless of where you stand on the issue, I think we can all agree that the internet completely changes access to information, and that it is important we all come up with new rules to deal with this new technology. Fortunately, we already have some of the groundwork laid out, as courts have spent roughly a century deciding questions such as what constitutes a private vs. a public figure, how and what kind of information can be reported about the two, whether certain types of information are "newsworthy" or not, etc.
Basically, courts can generally make a clear cut case of what is a "public record," amongst other relevant matters, because they've been doing just that for longer than anyone has been alive.
You later asked "why the digital newspapers should be treated differently?" I can field an answer off the top of my head: because information stored solely in print form is likely to be forgotten after a few years, especially if it is about a private individual's actions. Previously the only way for a third party to uncover the sixteen (16) year old auction notice at issue here would be to have someone (very thoroughly) scour the archives for information on this individual, and luck into the relevant section of the relevant page of the relevant paper from way back when. That's extremely unlikely to happen, which essentially means after a few years everyone can get something of a fresh start. By contrast, simply googling the guy's name apparently brings up the article, meaning he'd otherwise be stuck with the consequences forever. New technology, new paradigm.
And to anticipate your next objection: we as a society have long determined that simply because some information is true does not mean it should permanently damage the individual. A criminal record expungement wipes out the criminal record of the offender for most purposes, because we recognize that having a criminal record hanging over your head for all eternity goes beyond merely punishing a person and instead hamstrings them for eternity. We have bankruptcy laws because we recognize that sometimes folks need a fresh start. And we have laws which require that certain information cannot be publically reported after a set number of years: for example, your home foreclosure ceases to damage your credit after seven years, because after seven years it can no longer be put on your credit report. This is so that the credit card you took out at 18 doesn't continue hurting you when you're retiring.
On a related note, the above are all further examples of how we draw distinctions in reporting accurate information. Not every criminal conviction can be expunged, because we have decided that in some cases the public's right to know outweighs the individual's right to privacy. Your credit card debt stops haunting you after seven years, but bankruptcies stay on for ten because we think that's major enough to be remembered longer.
To bring it around: I'm unfamiliar with Spain's credit reporting laws, but I will be shocked if by law their credit reporting agencies were required to drop the auction years ago, notwithstanding that any Joe Schmoe could theoretically head down to the newspaper archives and eventually luck into finding the original auction notice. In other words, the information was de facto buried after X amount of time, because the laws regulated the only practical method of discovering the information. With the advent of the internet a new, hitherto unregulated technology has come along that is upsetting the prior equilibrium, as typing a name into a browser lets you take the auction notice from Effectively Dead And Buried to Front Page Results, no hours of mucking in the archives required. Different format, different rules.
And that is the argument for why digital newspapers should be treated differently.
