The Unexpected Consequences of the EU Right to Be Forgotten

2020 ◽  
pp. 279-301
Author(s):  
Maria Tzanou
Keyword(s):  
Search Engines ◽  
Data Privacy ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Privacy Rights ◽  
Online Data ◽  
General Data Protection Regulation ◽  
Right To Be Forgotten ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Unexpected Consequences

The right to be forgotten as established in the CJEU's decision in Google Spain is the first online data privacy right recognized in the EU legal order. This contribution explores two currently underdeveloped in the literature aspects of the right to be forgotten: its unexpected consequences on search engines and the difficulties of its implementation in practice by the latter. It argues that the horizontal application of EU privacy rights on private parties, such as internet search engines—as undertaken by the CJEU—is fraught with conceptual gaps, dilemmas, and uncertainties that create confusions about the enforceability of the right to be forgotten and the role of search engines. In this respect, it puts forward a comprehensive legal framework for the implementation of this right, which aims to ensure a legally certain and proportionate balance of the competing interests online in the light of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The Unexpected Consequences of the EU Right to Be Forgotten

2021 ◽  
pp. 1746-1768
Author(s):  
Maria Tzanou
Keyword(s):  
Search Engines ◽  
Data Privacy ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Privacy Rights ◽  
Online Data ◽  
General Data Protection Regulation ◽  
Right To Be Forgotten ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Unexpected Consequences

The right to be forgotten as established in the CJEU's decision in Google Spain is the first online data privacy right recognized in the EU legal order. This contribution explores two currently underdeveloped in the literature aspects of the right to be forgotten: its unexpected consequences on search engines and the difficulties of its implementation in practice by the latter. It argues that the horizontal application of EU privacy rights on private parties, such as internet search engines—as undertaken by the CJEU—is fraught with conceptual gaps, dilemmas, and uncertainties that create confusions about the enforceability of the right to be forgotten and the role of search engines. In this respect, it puts forward a comprehensive legal framework for the implementation of this right, which aims to ensure a legally certain and proportionate balance of the competing interests online in the light of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The Right To Be Forgotten

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward L. Carter
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Search Engines ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
Right To Be Forgotten ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Eu

The right to be forgotten is an emerging legal concept allowing individuals control over their online identities by demanding that Internet search engines remove certain results. The right has been supported by the European Court of Justice, some judges in Argentina, and data-protection regulators in several European countries, among others. The right is primarily grounded in notions of privacy and data protection but also relates to intellectual property, reputation, and right of publicity. Scholars and courts cite, as an intellectual if not legal root for the right to be forgotten, the legal principle that convicted criminals whose sentences are completed should not continually be publicly linked with their crimes. Critics contend that the right to be forgotten stands in conflict with freedom of expression and can lead to revisionist history. Scholars and others in the southern cone of South America, in particular, have decried the right to be forgotten because it could allow perpetrators of mass human rights abuses to cover up or obscure their atrocities. On the other hand, those in favor of the right to be forgotten say that digital technology preserves memory unnaturally and can impede forgiveness and individual progress. The right to be forgotten debate is far from resolved and poses difficult questions about access to, and control of, large amounts of digital information across national borders. Given the global nature of the Internet and the ubiquity of certain powerful search engines, the questions at issue are universal, but solutions thus far have been piecemeal. Although a 2014 decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) garnered much attention, the right to be forgotten has been largely shaped by a 1995 European Union Directive on Data Protection. In 2016, the EU adopted a new General Data Protection Regulation that will take effect in 2018 and could have a major impact because it contains an explicit right to be forgotten (also called right to erasure). The new regulation does not focus on the theoretical or philosophical justification for a right to be forgotten, and it appears likely the debate over the right in the EU and beyond will not be resolved even when the new rule takes effect.

New Boundaries for the Right to Be Forgotten?

2020 ◽  
pp. 302-314
Author(s):  
Federica Casarosa ◽  
Dianora Poletti
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
General Data Protection Regulation ◽  
National Courts ◽  
Right To Be Forgotten ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
General Data ◽  
Grand Chamber ◽  
The Right

The right to be forgotten has come to the forefront of the academic debate as a reaction to Court of Justice's decision in case C-507/17 Google LLC c. CNIL concerning the issue of geographical extension of the delisting obligation. Along with the development of CJEU jurisprudence, national courts have developed their own caselaw interpreting and adapting the right to be forgotten, now included in art 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation, to the pre-existing legal framework. Italian courts, and in particular the Italian Supreme Court, have addressed in several occasions the features and facets of the right to be forgotten, and the recent decision of the Grand Chamber (n. 19681, 22 July 2019) is the last though not the least. Starting form this decision, the chapter will analyse how the Supreme Court has attempted to systematise the right to be forgotten distinguishing what is called the traditional application of the right from the ones emerging in the digital context.

scholarly journals Can the Internet Forget? – Rhe Eight to be Forgotten in the EU Law and its Actual Impact on the Internet. Comparison of the Approaches Towards the Notion and Assessment of its Effectiveness

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-101
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Gebuza
Keyword(s):  
Data Protection ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
General Data Protection Regulation ◽  
Actual Impact ◽  
Right To Be Forgotten ◽  
General Data ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Eu

AbstractThe main aim of the article is to provide analysis on the notion of the right to be forgotten developed by the CJEU in the ruling Google v. AEPD & Gonzalez and by the General Data Protection Regulation within the context of the processing of personal data on the Internet. The analysis provides the comparison of approach towards the notion between European and American jurisprudence and doctrine, in order to demonstrate the scale of difficulty in applying the concept in practice.

scholarly journals WORK IN PROGRESS: THE EUROPEAN "RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN" – LEGAL AND TECHNICAL CHALLENGES OF SEARCH ENGINES COMPLYING THE RIGHT TO ERASURE

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Rensinghoff ◽  
Florian Marius Farke ◽  
Markus Dürmuth ◽  
Tobias Gostomzyk
Keyword(s):  
Search Engine ◽  
Search Engines ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
General Data Protection Regulation ◽  
Work In Progress ◽  
Search Results ◽  
Search Result ◽  
Right To Be Forgotten ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

The new European right to be forgotten (Art. 17 of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) grants EU citizens the right to demand the erasure of their personal data from anyone who processes their personal data. To enforce this right to erasure may be a problem for many of those data processors. On the one hand, they need to examine any claim to remove search results. On the other hand, they have to balance conflicting rights in order to prevent over-blocking and the accusation of censorship. The paper examines the criteria which are potentially involved in the decision-making process of search engines when it comes to the right to erasure. We present an approach helping search engine operators and individuals to assess and decide whether search results may have to be deleted or not. Our goal is to make this process more transparent and consistent, providing more legal certainty for both the search engine operator and the person concerned by the search result in question. As a result, we develop a model to estimate the chances of success to delete a particular search result for a given person. This is a work in progress.

Liabilities of Internet Users and Providers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Sartor
Keyword(s):  
Data Protection ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
General Data Protection Regulation ◽  
Safe Harbour ◽  
Right To Be Forgotten ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
General Data ◽  
Basic Ideas ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Eu

This chapter explores the connection between host providers’ liability and data protection, particularly the right to be forgotten. A conceptual analysis provides basic ideas including privacy, publicity, and neutrality. Subsequently, host providers’ immunities in EU law are compared with safe harbour provisions in US law. Data protection exceptionalism, namely, the view that providers’ immunities do not apply to violations of data protection, is critically considered. Knowledge of illegality of hosted content as a condition for providers’ liability is examined, focusing on how different understandings of this requirement may affect providers’ behaviour. The EU General Data Protection Regulation is then considered, addressing the way it defines the interface between data protection and the role/liabilities of providers. Finally, an analysis of the right to be forgotten is proposed, focusing on how the passage of time affects the legally relevant interests involved and on how sanctions are likely to affect the actions of host providers/users.

The Right to Be Forgotten in the European Union

2020 ◽  
pp. 485-502
Author(s):  
Miquel Peguera
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Search Engines ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Sensitive Data ◽  
General Data Protection Regulation ◽  
National Courts ◽  
Right To Be Forgotten ◽  
General Data ◽  
The Right

This chapter discusses data protection aspects of liability of online intermediaries with special emphasis on the right to be forgotten as developed by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and later by national courts in Europe. It considers also relevant provisions within the General Data Protection Regulation and how they affect online intermediaries’ activities. This chapter briefly considers two manifestations of the right to be forgotten as they are being currently applied in the EU. First, the right to be forgotten vis-à-vis internet search engines; that is, the right to be delisted from search results. Secondly, the right-to-be-forgotten claims directed against primary publishers to have the information deleted or anonymized at the source. In doing so, this chapter will point to hotly debated issues, recently addressed by the CJEU, such as the geographical scope of the right to be forgotten, that is its possible extraterritorial application, and the prohibition of processing of sensitive data that should theoretically apply to all data controllers, including those online intermediaries that qualify as such. This chapter also considers how balancing of rights should occur when right-to-be-forgotten claims to delist content are brought against search engines or publishers.

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