Right To Be Forgotten

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The right to be forgotten began with a small town spanish attorney named Mario Costeja Gonzalez, who went toe to toe with search engine giants Google over the right to privacy. Coseja often googled himself to see what his clients see when his name is searched and that is when he found a brief legal notice of unpaid tax debts over a decade old which was the first link under his name through a local newspaper archive (Lynskey, 2015). Worried that this will damage his reputation as an attorney he wrote to La Vanguardia who published the notice and argued that because it was paid and over a decade old, it is irrelevant and should be taken down but the local newspaper told him that since it was obtained through public records they had every right …show more content…

The right to privacy is defined to be “assured that information disclosed in the course of a commercial transaction, such as health conditions, financial status, or identity, is not shared with others unless authorized” (Lawrence & Weber, 2017, p.304). The case puts forward the idea “the right to be forgotten”, which means everyone has the right to control their personal data. The right to be forgotten can be understood as people's’ right to request that information be removed from the Internet or other repositories because it violated their privacy or was no longer relevant (Lawrence & Weber, 2017, p.454). Regulators for Facebook and Google say that “people should have the 'right to be forgotten' when their data is no longer needed or they want their data to be deleted"(Crovitz, 2010). There are two reasons for that: Personal data belongs to themselves and everyone should have the right to control their own data and information. Besides, personal information online can be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant or excessive, which may damage individual’s reputation if it is still on the internet. In this case, Gonzalez has already paid back all the debt but the report was still online. Anyone interested in him could type his name into Google and could find that report. People who do not know him well would have …show more content…

By Mr. Costeja, or another hopeful attorney hoping to rest an issue from the past. One of the key aspects of this case is that it started in Europe, more specifically in Spain. Via Mr. Costeja’s request of privacy, this “triggered debates on the applicability and interpretation of the “right to be forgotten”... which led the Court of Justice to analyze the applicability of the EU law, 1995 Data Protection Directive” (“Right to be Forgotten”, 2014). This is imperative, because unlike the United States, there is a precedence of privacy laws in relation to public records and

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