Right To Be Forgotten

Right To Be Forgotten

- Lawz Bureau

In January, in a unique case, the Karnataka High Court approved, accepted and upheld the concept of the right to be forgotten. In the Indian context, this right is unheard of – it comes at a time when because of the internet, obtaining personal information is easy and swift, and there is an intense debate on the right to information versus the right to privacy.

The right to be forgotten is a concept discussed and put into practice in the European Union (EU) and Argentina since 2006. The issue has arisen from desires of individuals to “determine the development of their life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically  stigmatized  as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past.”

There has been controversy about the practicality of establishing a right to be forgotten to the status of an international human right in respect to access to information, due in part to the vagueness of current rulings attempting to implement such a right. There are concerns about its impact on the right to freedom of expression, its interaction with the  right to privacy, and whether creating a right to be forgotten would decrease the quality of the Internet through censorship and a rewriting of history, and opposing concerns about problems such as revenge porn sites appearing in search engine listings for a person’s name, or references to petty crimes committed many years ago indefinitely remaining an unduly prominent part of a person’s Internet footprint.