The Right to Be Forgotten Across the Pond

Are you unclear about the European Commission's 2012 draft Data Protection Regulation proposing a qualified “right to be forgotten?” That's not surprising, say Meg Ambrose and Jef Ausloos. Their in-depth analysis finds a bifurcated social and legal history, divergent conceptions of the “right,” and alternative options for implementation. They contrast a right to “oblivion” (full deletion of certain public data) with a “right to erasure” (removal of personal data provided for automated processing) and find them conflated in the “right to be forgotten” in the EU's proposed data regulation. The two should be separated, they argue, with support for the right to erasure while more study is needed on the less clear “right to oblivion.”