Does the right to be forgotten violate freedom of expression, the right to know, and potentially distort the historical record?

The right to be forgotten, the right of individuals to remove information about themselves left online, seems reasonable on the surface, but it raises a number of issues, including conflicts between freedom of expression and the right to know, problems with the practicality of removing information, a reduction in the openness of the internet, and a distortion of the historical record.

 

In the movie Men In Black, the agents carry special devices. These devices are meant to erase the memories of ordinary people in the event of an alien sighting. If such a device were to become available to individuals, people would be able to control their own information in other people’s memories. In the modern world, with the widespread use of the internet, personal information is spread chaotically across the internet, but it is not easy to delete it freely. For example, currently, personal information that can be viewed through Internet searches belongs to the individual, but companies have the right to delete it, and individuals cannot delete it at will. To solve this problem, there has been a recent debate about the introduction of a system that allows individuals to freely delete their personal data on the Internet. This is called the “right to be forgotten”. It’s like the special device in Men In Black that allows individuals to erase their personal data and memories from the internet. This seemingly obvious right is fraught with problems. I’m against the right to be forgotten, which is being debated around the world.
The right to be forgotten does not have a clear definition, but it is generally understood as the right of individuals to self-purge their records from permanent storage – that is, when their information is no longer needed for a legitimate purpose, it is the individual’s right to have it erased and no longer processed. It is also the right of individuals to delete information about them that has been published online. On January 25, 2012, the European Union (EU) finalized a data protection amendment to strengthen the rights of data subjects on the internet, including the right to be forgotten. This is the first time in the world that a right to be forgotten has been legislated, 16 years after the 1995 Data Protection Directive. The EU has elevated the amendment from a “directive” to a more legally binding “regulation” that applies to all EU member states. The United States, on the other hand, is studying the need for a right to be forgotten on the grounds that it restricts freedom of expression and creates new problems. The U.S., in particular, has a tradition of broadly protecting freedom of expression under the First Amendment, and the fact that the majority of global social media companies are U.S. companies has made it difficult to legislate the right to be forgotten. This is because major SNS companies such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are headquartered in the U.S., and if the U.S. government actively supported the right to be forgotten, they would likely face massive lawsuits. Let’s take a look at some of the problems with the right to be forgotten.
The first is the conflict between the right to be forgotten and freedom of expression and the right to know. Freedom of expression is a right as a member of a community, and it is an essential element of democracy that people should be able to express their opinions in whatever form they choose. Especially in cyberspace, freedom of expression includes the right to anonymity, which is an important factor in enabling the free expression of opinions. The right to know, on the other hand, is intended to enable the free circulation of information and public participation, which is the right to collect information and demand its disclosure without state interference. Once the right to be forgotten is implemented, individuals will be free to delete their records. However, this may limit the ability of third parties to comment on certain information, disseminate information, and so on, which may infringe on freedom of expression. If individuals are free to delete information that is publicly available on the internet, third parties’ right to know is also limited.
The second problem is that removing information without the consent of the republisher can create legal issues. If an individual posts an opinion or republishes an article about a particular event, and the information is removed at the request of the original publisher, the republisher’s freedom of expression may be violated. This puts the portal site in the role of deciding whether the information should be removed, which can lead to excessive takedown requests. As a result, information that has already been expressed on the internet can disappear without a sound bite, which can have a significant chilling effect on freedom of expression. In the media in particular, when articles involving interested parties are redacted or deleted by takedown requests, it is likely that only information favorable to those with power or capital will remain. This violates press freedom and can lead to social imbalances.
A third problem is that the unrestricted exercise of the right to be forgotten could distort or halt the act of recording history. If records of certain events can be deleted at the request of individuals, it is possible that all negative events will disappear and only positive ones will remain. This can lead to a distortion of the historical record and, in turn, a loss of opportunity to learn lessons to prevent history from repeating itself. For example, if records of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China were deleted, the event would be erased from history and the suffering of those affected would be forgotten. The indiscriminate deletion of information risks erasing the record of history itself.
The fourth problem is the practicality of the right to be forgotten. While the implementation of the right to be forgotten requires a significant investment of resources and money by organizations, economic and technological limitations make complete erasure impossible. For example, if information posted on the internet is copied and disseminated by another user, it is not practical to completely delete the original post along with the copied information. If information is stored in a web crawler or archive, it can be retrieved at a later date, making complete erasure impossible. Therefore, the effectiveness of the right to be forgotten is quite low.
The fifth problem is that the right to be forgotten could undermine the openness that is a key feature of the Internet. The Internet is not a closed, centrally managed system, but a free flow of information in a self-decentralized form. If a right to be forgotten were to be introduced, it would restrict the circulation of information, reduce trust between individuals, and significantly reduce the openness of the Internet. This would diminish the information-sharing benefits of the Internet and threaten the Internet ecosystem itself.
While the right to be forgotten has been introduced in Europe and is being debated in many countries around the world, this seemingly obvious right to be forgotten can create a number of problems. With more downsides than upsides, the right to be forgotten should not be introduced and should be reversed in Europe.