This European Ruling Could Break the Internet
Establishing a global “right to be forgotten” would be a big mistake.
Careful what you wish for.
Photographer: Noah Berger/Bloomberg
Early next year, the European Union’s highest court is expected to rule on one of the internet’s most controversial topics: the right to be forgotten. The judges should curb their ambition, lest they open a can of worms that will spill well beyond Europe.
The right, enshrined in privacy law, allows Europeans to demand that information about them be removed from online search results if it’s outdated, irrelevant or “excessive.” The case in question involves a dispute between Google and French regulators, who in 2015 ordered the company to respect this right on all its sites worldwide — not just google.fr, but also google.com and so on.