Forget About the Right to be Forgotten: How About a Right to be Different?
Auckland University Law Review Vol. 22 (2016)
36 Pages Posted: 18 Apr 2019
Date Written: 2016
Abstract
Every day, people conduct Google searches. More often than people would admit, these searches are for specific individuals. As users, we wish to uncover as much information as possible about the people we search. But as data subjects, we wish to retain our privacy and keep our past in the past. Concerns about data protection, privacy and reputation curation will only accumulate as we spend more time online. To address these concerns properly, we need to rise above scaremongering about the right to be forgotten. We must think critically about how we want to use the web, and find practical ways to balance the competing interests at play. To this end, this article critically analyses the Court of Justice of the European Union's 2014 judgment Google Spain v Agencia Espafiola de Protección de Datos, as well as the General Data Protection Regulation. It suggests that the right to be forgotten should be replaced with a "right to be different" — a solution that heavily emphasises worldwide applicability, permanence and longevity.
Keywords: GDPR, right to be forgotten, EU, law, data, Google, Google Spain, European Union, data protection, privacy, search, search engines, General Data Protection Regulation
JEL Classification: K00, K39, K30, K33, K10
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation