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Developing a Right to be Forgotten

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Abstract

For many years, various authors have postulated the possible existence of a right to be forgotten. The Court of Justice of the European Union in the landmark ruling in Google Spain v Costeja González (C 131/12) enacted a limited version of the right. Now the General Data Protection Rules includes a “right to erasure”. This article looks at the evolution of the right, paying special attention to its future.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Lawrence (2016).

  2. 2.

    Ardia (2010).

  3. 3.

    As implemented by the Google Spain decision, see infra footnote 23.

  4. 4.

    Luhmann (1995), Sørensen and Triantafillou (2016).

  5. 5.

    Hornung and Schnabel (2009).

  6. 6.

    Ibid.

  7. 7.

    Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, OJ L 281/31.

  8. 8.

    Bygrave (2002).

  9. 9.

    Bignami (2008).

  10. 10.

    OBG Ltd v Allan and Douglas v Hello! [2008] 1 AC 1.

  11. 11.

    Campbell v MGN Ltd [2004] UKHL 22.

  12. 12.

    Murray v Express Newspapers Ltd [2007] EWHC 1980 (Chancery Division); Abbey v Gilligan [2012] EWHC EWHC QB 3217; Vidal-Hall & Others v Google Inc [2014] EWHC QB 13.

  13. 13.

    Wainwright v Home Office [2003] UKHL 53.

  14. 14.

    Google Inc v Vidal-Hall & Others [2015] EWCA Civil 311.

  15. 15.

    Charlesworth (2000).

  16. 16.

    Werro (2009).

  17. 17.

    Balkam (2014).

  18. 18.

    Mayer-Schönberger (2009).

  19. 19.

    AMP v Persons Unknown [2011] EWHC QB 3454 (TCC).

  20. 20.

    For obvious reasons, her identity is kept hidden in the proceedings.

  21. 21.

    Cobia (2008).

  22. 22.

    Szekely (2014).

  23. 23.

    Google Spain v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos and Mario Costeja González, case C131/12, 13.05.2014. ECLI:EU:C:2014:317.

  24. 24.

    A technical act performed either by a search engine as in the case of the Google Spain case, or by a web archiving crawler.

  25. 25.

    The Advocate General provides an opinion before the decision, the court can decide to follow it, rely on it, or ignore it (Jääskinen 2013).

  26. 26.

    Spauwen and van Den Brink (2014).

  27. 27.

    Ibid.

  28. 28.

    Ibid.

  29. 29.

    Google Spain, at 38.

  30. 30.

    Search Removal Request Under Data Protection Law in Europe. https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=websearch. Accessed 03 Nov 2016.

  31. 31.

    Google (2014).

  32. 32.

    When the report was first released in 2015, the figure stood at 58%.

  33. 33.

    Ibid.

  34. 34.

    Temkin (2003).

  35. 35.

    Matthiesson (2010).

  36. 36.

    Wikimedia Foundation (2016).

  37. 37.

    Wikipedia https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temptation_Island. Accessed 02 Nov 2016.

  38. 38.

    Wikipedia https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duval. Accessed 02 Nov 2016.

  39. 39.

    Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Hutch. Accessed 02 Nov 2016.

  40. 40.

    Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Almada. Accessed 02 Nov 2016.

  41. 41.

    Zittrain (2014).

  42. 42.

    Guadamuz (2014a).

  43. 43.

    Solon (2014).

  44. 44.

    Rosen (2012).

  45. 45.

    Parmar (2014).

  46. 46.

    Fazlioglu (2013).

  47. 47.

    Tréguer (2014).

  48. 48.

    Tambini, et al. (2008).

  49. 49.

    Open Letter to Google From 80 Internet Scholars: Release RTBF Compliance Data (2015), https://medium.com/@ellgood/open-letter-to-google-from-80-internet-scholars-release-rtbf-compliance-data-cbfc6d59f1bd#.mxjhd34sh . Accessed 02 Nov 2016.

  50. 50.

    Ibid.

  51. 51.

    Urban and Quilter (2006).

  52. 52.

    Hole (2014).

  53. 53.

    Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), OJ L 119/1.

  54. 54.

    Lee (2014).

  55. 55.

    Youtube (2014) https://youtu.be/rEwf4sDgxHo. Accessed 03 Nov 2016.

  56. 56.

    Curtis and Philipson (2014).

  57. 57.

    Ibid.

  58. 58.

    Tretikov (2014).

  59. 59.

    Levine (2014).

  60. 60.

    Lyons (2014).

  61. 61.

    Sebastion (2015).

  62. 62.

    Schneier (2015).

  63. 63.

    Supra n 22.

  64. 64.

    Ibid.

  65. 65.

    Nissenbaum (2011).

  66. 66.

    Supra n 22.

  67. 67.

    Guadamuz (2014b).

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Guadamuz, A. (2017). Developing a Right to be Forgotten. In: Synodinou, TE., Jougleux, P., Markou, C., Prastitou, T. (eds) EU Internet Law. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64955-9_3

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