The Internet never forgets, unless the law forces it to

When I worked as a campus newspaper faculty advisor several years ago, a recent graduate once asked if we could remove an article about dating from the newspaper’s website because it was ruining his chances at romance. The graduate had been quoted, some years earlier, trying to make a joke about relationships, but the line came across in an unflattering way. He told us that whenever he met a new person he wanted to date, she Googled him and the news article invariably came up near the top of search results. He had decided that the article was going to prevent him from ever getting married.

Although the case might seem trite, I could feel how serious it was for this graduate. The newspaper staff debated what to do about information that was once true, but might have become outdated. The debate pitted free expression and historical truth arguments, on the one hand, versus the case for restored privacy and the right to control one’s own identity, on the other.

A similar debate is now playing out in legislative and judicial bodies around the world, under the catchy but perhaps misleading title of “the right to be forgotten.” Most prominently, this right has been endorsed by the