Right to be forgotten
The issue has arisen from desires of individuals to "determine the development of their life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatized as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past".
[3]: 121 Those who favor a right to be forgotten cite its necessity due to issues such as revenge porn sites and references to past petty crimes appearing in search engine listings for a person's name.
[8] De Cunha's case achieved initial success resulting in Argentina search engines not showing images of the particular celebrity, however, this decision is on appeal.
In 2016, a Chinese court in Beijing rejected an argument for the right to be forgotten when a judge ruled in favor of Baidu in a lawsuit over removing search results.
Moreover, the PIPL strengthens the regulation of cross-border data flows, requiring risk assessments in specific cases and mandating additional protective measures for users.
Guidelines set by EU regulators were not released until November 2014, but Google began to take action on this much sooner than that, which (according to one author) allowed them "to shape interpretation to [their] own ends".
[44] Due in part to their refusal to comply with the recommendation of the privacy regulating board Google has become the subject of a four-year-long antitrust investigation by the European Commission.
[54] The court ruled in Costeja that search engines are responsible for the content they point to and thus, Google was required to comply with EU data privacy laws.
[58] On October 27, 2009, lawyers for Wolfgang Werlé who—together with Manfred Lauber—was convicted of murdering Walter Sedlmayr sent the Wikimedia Foundation a cease and desist letter requesting that Werlé's name be removed from the English language Wikipedia article Walter Sedlmayr, citing a 1973 Federal Constitutional Court decision that allows the suppression of a criminal's name in news accounts once he is released from custody.
[63] On January 18, 2008, a court in Hamburg supported the personality rights of Werlé, which by German law includes removing his name from archive coverage of the case.
[81] As of February 2017, the Delhi High Court is hearing a case involving a man requesting to have information regarding his mother and wife to be removed from a search engine.
[82] Currently, there is no legal standard for the right to be forgotten, but if implemented, this would mean that citizens no longer need to file a case in order to request for information from search engines to be removed.
In May 2016, South Korea's Communications Commission (KCC) announced citizens will be able to request search engines and website administrators to restrict their own postings from being accessible publicly.
[83] The KCC released "Guidelines on the Right to Request Access Restrictions on Personal Internet Postings",[84] which took effect in June 2016 and do not apply to third party contents.
[92][93] The court reasoned that "any person living a life of rectitude has that right to happiness which includes a freedom from unnecessary attacks on his character, social standing or reputation.
[clarification needed][96][97] In a June 2014 opinion piece in Forbes, columnist Joseph Steinberg noted that "many privacy protections that Americans believe that they enjoy – even some guaranteed by law – have, in fact, been eroded or even obliterated by technological advances".
Steinberg, in explaining the need for legislation guaranteeing the "right to be forgotten", noted that existing laws require adverse information be removed from credit reports after a period of time, and that allowing the sealing or expunging of criminals records are effectively undermined by the ability of prospective lenders or employers to find forever the removed information in a matter of seconds by doing a web search.
[98] On March 11, 2015, Intelligence Squared US, an organization that stages Oxford-Style debates, held an event concerning the question, "Should the U.S. adopt the 'Right to be Forgotten' online?"
[101] In March 2017, New York state senator Tony Avella and assemblyman David Weprin introduced a bill proposing that individuals be allowed to require search engines and online speakers to remove information that is "inaccurate", "irrelevant", "inadequate", or "excessive", that is "no longer material to current public debate or discourse" and is causing demonstrable harm to the subject.
[107] Therefore, the EU and the United States are forced to confront their regulatory differences and negotiate on a set of regulations that apply to all foreign companies processing and handling data of European citizens and residents.
[108] Given the inconsistencies between the EU and the United States on numerous digital privacy regulations, including the right to be forgotten, Article 25 poses a threat to trans-Atlantic data flows.
Businesses that manage their clients' online reputations have responded to the European Court ruling by exercising the right to be forgotten as a means to remove unfavorable information.
"[70] Article 80 upheld freedom of speech, and while not lessening obligations on data providers and social media sites, nevertheless due to the wide meaning of "journalistic purposes" allows more autonomy and reduces the amount of information that is necessary to be removed.
[2]: 9 When Google agreed to implement the ruling, European Commission Vice-President Viviane Reding said, "The Court also made clear that journalistic work must not be touched; it is to be protected.
[126][127] Despite these criticisms and Google's action, the company's CEO, Larry Page worries that the ruling will be "used by other governments that aren't as forward and progressive as Europe to do bad things", though has since distanced himself from that statement.
Although the ruling is intended for private individuals it opens the door to anyone who wants to whitewash their personal history… The Court's decision is a retrograde move that misunderstands the role and responsibility of search engines and the wider Internet.
[133][134] The Daily Telegraph said, on 6 August 2014, that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales "described the EU's Right to be Forgotten as deeply immoral, as the organisation that operates the online encyclopedia warned the ruling will result in an Internet riddled with memory holes".
In the UK, the 2017 Conservative manifesto[142] included a pledge to allow social media platform users to remove outdated information that was posted when they were younger than the age of 18.
[citation needed] However, in the upcoming elections in the UK laws could be passed to allow minors to remove embarrassing posts or photos on social media that could come back to affect job applications or public image in later life.
The intentions for this extension of privacy are based on the fact that social media sites store years of data that affect minors lives' much later after the information is posted.
