Privacy Part 2: The Right to Be Forgotten

February 24

The Court of Justice of the European Union made big waves last May when it ruled against Google on a claim brought by a Spanish citizen asserting a right to remove two news articles that appeared in Google search results when he searched for his own name. The case, now known as the case that recognized the “right to be forgotten,” has come to the forefront of discussions of online privacy. In today’s class, we’ll explore the “right to be forgotten,” how it applies in Europe, whether it could ever come to the United States, and how international companies address competing national balances over privacy and free speech.

We’ll also spend part of this day describing the final project for the class, and discuss how to pick a good community and issue to study for the project.

Our guest this week is Berkman staffer Adam Holland, who oversees the operations of several projects, including Chilling Effects, which tracks legal threats against online speech.

Readings

• Jeffery Rosen, "The Right to Be Forgotten," 64 Stanford Law Review Online 88 (February 13, 2012)

• Eric Posner, "We All Have the Right to Be Forgotten," Slate, May 14, 2014

• Jonathan Zittrain, "Don't Force Google to 'Forget'," New York Times, May 14, 2014

• Gail Sullivan, "'Right to be Forgotten' gets real as Google wipes stories from search results," July 3, 2014

• Jeffery Toobin, "The Solace of Oblivion," The New Yorker, September 29, 2014

Optional Readings

• Google Spain SL v. Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (an abridged version of the ECJ decision from May 2014 - built on the Berkman Center's own H2O Platform for online textbooks)

• Aleksandra Kuczerawy and Jef Ausloos, European Union and Google Spain (from the brand new report from the Global Network of Internet and Society centers)

Class Discussion

Please remember to sign your postings by adding four tildes (~~~~) to the end of your contribution. This will automatically add your username and the date/time of your post, like so: Andy 15:12, 7 November 2013 (EST)

Andy, could you please look over the microphones in the classroom? I had a really hard time hearing what was said in class last week. There was no problem with hearing the people closest to the camera, but those further away (including Mr. Faris) were really difficult to hear. :) JosefinS (talk) 06:38, 19 February 2015 (EST)

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Thanks for the heads up, Josefin. I think we were having some problems with Rob's mic, and I'll tell folks in class to speak up to make sure the table mics pick up the sound. Andy (talk) 08:09, 19 February 2015 (EST)

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I have a hard time deciding wether I like the ”right to be forgotten law” or not. It can be a good thing when it comes to giving people a second chance in life or preventing false rumors from destroing peoples lives. But it could at the same time undermine the freedom of speech, which is a very important important element in a democracy.

Also, three reasons for search results to be removed are that they are ”inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant”, which is very subjective. Who should have the power to decide what is irrelevant and what is important information to the public? And what if information that is irrelevant today unexpectedly happens to be relevant in a few years?

I was surprised to know that ”Google has fielded about a hundred and twenty thousand requests for deletions and granted roughly half of them.”, because I haven´t heard about this law since last spring and didn´t reflect upon the fact that a lot of people could´ve used this ”right to be forgotten”. I wonder what kind of people that use it, why they do it, etc. Is it to be able to move on from previous mistakes? Is it to hide things about themselves to be able to defraud others? Whatever you think is right (to implement this right or not) there are several approaches on this matter that are relevant. It is important that we discuss these issues now, when more and more information can be found on the Internet. JosefinS (talk) 14:12, 22 February 2015 (EST)