The right to be forgotten

[Baron, Dennis E]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:


The internet is a place where, without even trying, words achieve immortality. Once posted, even the most frivolous thoughts are automatically copied, archived, and indexed. To be sure, the web can be ephemeral. Studies show that much online information is short-lived, with up to eighty-five percent disappearing within a year. And we’ve all had the frustration of failing to find something that we read online just the week before.

But words do have permanence. Back in the first century BCE, the Roman poet Horace advised young writers not to put their words out into the world too soon: nescit vox missa reverti, ‘the word, once sent, can never be recalled.’ Today that advice would be, 'an email once sent . . . .' There is simply no “undo.” Horace 2.0 would warn, ‘The internet never forgets.’

But a recent decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) tries to do just that, make the internet forget, because, according to the Court, everyone has the right to be forgotten. . . .

Read the rest of this post on the Web of Language: http://bit.ly/weblan




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