Legal Research

A Right to Forget ? Online

By John Gregory

There is lots of advice around, addressed to the young and innocent but probably applicable to the old and jaded as well, to be cautious about what one puts online about oneself, since it could be there for a long time and influence people whose interest you have not yet thought about — future employers and mates being two of the main classes.

The French are now pondering a legal ?right to forget? (un droit à l?oubli) — or at least a right of a person to get old information about him/herself taken down. The BBC has the story.

Is this: (a) a good idea, and (b) even remotely possible, even by force of law? What about Internet archives, and mirror sites, and viral messages?

I had thought that there was already such a legal rule in French law, though not perhaps enforceable against a host of a web site. Does that sound familiar to anyone else, or did I just make it up?

Should we have something similar here?

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 12, 2010 (boomark / email).