Strengthened "Right to Be Forgotten" Is Now Permanent in E.U., and Will Likely Affect U.S.

Passage of a new General Data Protection Regulation by the Parliament of the European Union means that "the right to be forgotten," created in a 2014 decision by the European Court of Justice, is now a permanent part of EU law. And the new regulation includes specific language to apply to any website in the world that includes or handles data from EU residents, including those based in the United States.

E.U. Seeks to Take Over the Internet

For a while now I and others have written and spoke about the court decision (summary) earlier this year applying the European Union's conception of the right to privacy, including "the right to be forgotten," to internet search engine results. Now, the European Union is seeking to export the concept worldwide.

The Impact of "The Right to Be Forgotten"

I've written before on the European Union's "right to be forgotten," and the dangers that a European Court of Justice ruling earlier this year applying the right to search engine results poses to the internet.

Today, I was pleased to give a presentation on the origins of the "right to be forgotten" and the court decision, and the implications for the internet both in Europe and here in the United States to the Sports, Entertainment, and Media Law Society at the LSU Law Center.

Limiting Damage of EU Privacy Ruling

Google has began implementing a decision (summary) by the European Court of Justice requiring search engines to honor requests to remove links to online information about individuals that is "no longer necessary in the light of the purposes for which they were collected or processed," under the European concept of "the right to be forgotten." And it has done so in a way that limits the damage to the internet as a source of information.

Excellent Analysis of E.U. Decision

My colleague Mark Stephens, a London barrister, has written an excellent analysis of the E.U. Court of Justice ruling requiring internet search engines to remove links to embarrassing yet true information about individuals who are not public figures.

The title of Mark's commentary in The Guardian, "Only the powerful will benefit from the 'right to be forgotten,'" explains just one of the many problems with the E.U. court's ruling.

Will E.U. Court's Privacy Ruling Break the Internet?

cross posted at the Digital Media Law Project
In 2012, a bevy of internet companies and web sites waged a successful campaign against bills in Congress -- the PROTECT IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) --  meant to combat copyright privacy. In the face of this opposition, the proposals were dropped (although their legacy survives). One of the major claims by the opponents was that the bills would "break the Internet" by requiring the disabling of URLs and removal of online links to sites that include unauthorized uses of copyrighted materials (although not all agreed with this assessment).