How Far Do We Go?

As human beings, we all have “rights.” Some are obvious, some not so. There are newly recognized rights that we have fought to get. One of those that are now being debated is the right to be forgotten. The right to be forgotten ensures individuals the right to request their information to be either deleted from the web database or become unsearchable.

As the name itself suggests, the right to be forgotten is a “right” to be protected. It is distinct from privacy rights. Privacy rights deal with information that is not publicly known, whereas the right to be forgotten involves publicly known information as well. It includes photos and videos of oneself once publicly known. If there is information containing data about him/her that the individual wishes to be removed, then it should be granted based on this right.

There is criticism against the right to be forgotten. If this right is recognized, it may violate one of the most important human rights ― freedom of speech. It could also constitute censorship and a reduction in the freedom of expression.

This right would also make the search results biased, which hurts the neutrality of the Internet. Information shown on search engines would only show the information people want to see, not the unbiased truth.

Also, big data companies would have to go through great lengths to identify third parties with other people’s information to remove it. It would also mean that these ‘big’ data companies many not be as big as they were, with a vast number of information people would request to be eliminated.

On the other hand, people argue with these criticisms saying that the web was not so unbiased before. They claim the net is a big fused storage containing numerous information written by billions of people, so it cannot be neutral. The right would not change the neutrality of the web.

Moreover, as stated before, it is a “right” and it needs to be kept. The information that a person can erase can only be about him/herself and not somebody else’s, so why oppose the right to be forgotten? Everyone has a past that they want people to not see, and this right enables them to make a fresh, clean start.

There is much debate about the right, whether it should be kept or not and to what extent should we allow the obliteration of our past? Still, the question remains: how far do we go to protect the right to be forgotten?