The original complaint was a Spaniard who had filed bankruptcy quite a few years earlier. By Spanish law, that information could not be used any more in financial decisions about him, but a Google search brought it up. The court ordered Google to not associate the Spaniard's name with the information. Removing the notice of bankruptcy would have caused worse problems.

In many cases in many European countries, information about certain things is considered no longer usable for decisions. This allows people to have solid second chances at putting their lives together, an idea that seems foreign to the US. It doesn't work if the information in question comes up in a Google search of the person's name.

There is good reasoning behind the "right to be forgotten" requests (although the system is abusable).

In general, I agree with you. As a sweeping statement, I have to disagree with it. There are cases where information is false or misleading or generally harmful.

Study the 1940 campaign sometime. The French were trashed, but it wasn't due to cowardice (except in some class "B" reserve divisions). As the campaign went on, they introduced different tactics and fought hard, although after the initial German breakthrough they were doomed. After that, there were always Frenchmen eager to fight. Feel free to criticize the Petain collaborationist regime, but it really wasn't much if any worse than most of its counterparts.

That did not lead to widespread poverty in Germany, since money was in kind of a flow. Germany would pay reparations to Britain and France, Britain and France would use that to repay their loans from the US, and the US would dump the money back into Germany in the form of investments. This would have had consequences for Germany in the long run, but in this case there was no long run. You may be thinking of the hyperinflation that wiped out people's savings, a German retaliation to the French occupation of the Ruhr area, but that didn't cause widespread poverty.

The German people gave about 40% of the vote to the National Socialists, which isn't quite the same as putting it into dictatorial power. Hitler benefited from being vastly underestimated at the time, and seized power by illegal means. The National Socialists were losing ground a little when Hitler took over.

A reference arrest or trial is a statement of fact, and reporting that is not libel in the US. Accusations can well be libel, and last I looked (a long time ago) republishing the accusations can be libel.

Assume that you have been accused of child molestation, say, and you're completely innocent. If people see that accusation, they're likely to be prejudiced against you, and that can lead to a lot of employment and relationship difficulties. You can file libel suits, but that has limits. It's very possible that the accusers you can find don't have enough assets to be worth suing, and it's very likely not enough assets to put your life halfway back together.

Instead, if a Google search on "Himmy32" didn't turn up those accusations, most of your difficulties from then forward would disappear. The information would still be out there, but not linked to you.

Such sex is not required, but it's sure going to happen, and it's happened as far back as we know. IIRC, abstinence-based sex education has worse teen pregnancy rates than none at all.

As far as exposure to porn and sexual activity goes, that's an empirical question, and I don't remember seeing much about it, particularly with children. I see no validity in attempting an a priori answer.

You know what else has really bad withdrawal symptoms? Falling. Once you've done it for several seconds, quitting cold turkey is usually immediately fatal.

To be precise, we knew that Saddam had had chemical weapons. The 2003 invasion found some leftovers from that time, but nothing else. The UN inspection teams were apparently effective.

In the US, a white supremacist site is perfectly legal. There are hosting providers on the Internet that won't host one, but there are those that will. Hate speech, being speech (and often political speech), is legal in the US.

There's also a gradation. I am a more or less fully functioning human, and I have certain legal rights, including the right to make binding contracts and the right to live where I want (with the usual caveats that I have to make the arrangements). A child has the same right to life as I do, but cannot make binding contracts and can be required to live with his or her parents. A human with serious cognitive problems might well have only the same rights as a child.

It wouldn't be unreasonable to select certain highly intelligent non-human species and give them some legal protections that other animals wouldn't enjoy, but I know of no such laws.

As far as moral rights go, I believe rights are linked to responsibilities. Since we don't hold chimps responsible for their actions, I don't see that they can have rights. This is not to say that they should be mistreated, but I consider that a human responsibility rather than an animal right.

There's an easy definition to Homo Sapiens: a child of a Homo Sapiens. This works for all possible people throughout human history. Since we can't travel back in time, that works just fine. Since we haven't developed a population that is viable breeding with itself but can't breed with other people, we don't need to worry about speciation for now.

There are potential problems with this definition that may come up in the future (massive genetic engineering, contact with aliens, etc.), but they aren't a concern now, and they aren't going to affect how we view chimps.

If I see a coin come up heads nine out of ten times, I'm expecting it to come up heads on the eleventh toss. That's strong evidence that it isn't a fair coin or toss or something.

As far as humanity is concerned, we're in a situation where no other species is close to Homo Sapiens in some very important ways, so it's easy to have a bright legal line excluding chimps and other species. Exactly what we're going to do if we encounter intelligent aliens is a matter for speculation.

I've seen plenty of similar questions on Stack Overflow. Q: "How do I do this really stupid thing?" A: "You don't. What are you trying to do in the first place?"

Regrettably, US courts have upheld arbitration-only agreements.