Internet Privacy and the Right to Be Forgotten/Right to Oblivion

Abstract

The right to oblivion, equally called right to be forgotten, is the right for natural persons to have information about them deleted after a certain period of time. The Internet has brought with it a need for a new balance between the free dissemination of information and individual self-determination. This balance is precisely what is at stake with the right to oblivion. This right has three facets: the right to oblivion of the judicial past, the right to oblivion established by data protection legislation and a new, and still controversial, digital right to oblivion that amounts to personal data having an expiration date or being applicable in the specific context of social networks. This paper analyses each of these facets within the Internet environment.