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right to be forgotten

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Also known as the right to be forgotten

legal concept

Wikidata facts

Subclass of
case law
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on focus list of Wikimedia project
WikiProject Human rights
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via Wikidata · CC0

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

The right to be forgotten (RTBF) is the right to have private information about a person removed from Internet searches and other directories in some circumstances. The issue arose from the desires of individuals to "determine the development of their life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatized as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past". The right entitles a person to have data about them deleted so that it can no longer be discovered by third parties, particularly through search engines.

Those who favor a right to be forgotten cite its necessity due to issues such as revenge porn sites and references to past petty crimes appearing in search engine listings for a person's name. The main concern is for the potentially undue influence that such results may exert upon a person's online reputation indefinitely if not removed.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “right to be forgotten” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.