rewriting history; Was: Concerns/questions around Software Heritage Archive

[Attila Lendvai <attila@lendvai.name>]

> I was also distressed to see how poorly they treated a developer
> who wished to update their name:
> https://cohost.org/arborelia/post/4968198-the-software-heritag
> https://cohost.org/arborelia/post/5052044-the-software-heritag


let's put aside the trans aspect of this question for a moment, because this question has broad implications, much broader than the regrettable struggles of trans people.

the question here is whether person A has the right to demand that others change their memory of A's past actions (i.e. rewrite history, or else become a felon... or maybe just unwelcome in polite society?).

so, let's just assume that i have decided to prefer being called a new name (without disclosing my reasons).

is it reasonable for me to demand from somebody else to change their memory of my past actions? e.g. to demand that they rewrite their memory/instances of my books that i have published under my previous name in the past? or that they forget my old name, and when the change happened? or that they do not link the two names to the same individual?

if so, then where is the line? what's the principle here? and what are its implications?

do i have the right to demand the replacement of a page in each copy that exists out there? i.e. should it be criminal (or just a sin?) to own old copies? do i have the right to demand that certain libraries must sell/burn their copies of my books and never own them again?

what if i committed a fraud? e.g. i pushed a backdoor somewhere... do i have the right to memory-hole my old identity?

and who will enforce such a right? the government? i.e. those people who already keep an (extralegal) record of whenever i farted in the past decade? where can i even file my GDPR request for that? would that really be a "right to be forgotten", or merely a tool of even tighter monopolization of The Central Database?

what if i'm a joker and i demand a new change every week for the rest of my life? do i have the right to the resources of every library out there? to keep their staff and computers busy for the next couple of decades?

but let's put the technical aspects aside; wherever we draw the line... what are the implications of that for borader society? because i sure see some actors out there who can hardly wait to start erasing certain records at the barrel of the law, including rewriting books of significance... (and while we are at it, i suggest to start preserving your offline/local copies, because we're up to a wild ride!)

humanity has reached an enormous challenge with the complete marginalization of the costs of storing and transmitting information. it's a completely new/different playing field, and how we proceed from here has grave implications. this questions is nowhere near as obvious/trivial as presented in the cited blog post.

-- 
• attila lendvai
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--
“It is only when compassion is present that people allow themselves to see the truth. […] Compassion is a kind of healing agent that helps us tolerate the hurt of seeing the truth.”
	— A.H. Almaas (1944–), 'Elements of the Real in Man (Diamond Heart, Book 1)'