Rational enforcement of digital oblivion

Abstract

Digital storage in the information society allows perfect and unlimited remembering. Yet, the right of an individual to enforce oblivion for pieces of information about her is part of her fundamental right to privacy. We propose a solution to digital forgetting based on anonymously fingerprinting expiration dates. In our solution, people who learn information about an individual are rationally interested in helping the individual enforce her oblivion policy. Thanks to this rational involvement, even services for content spreading like Facebook or YouTube would be interested in fingerprinting downloads, thereby effectively enforcing the right of content owners to canceling content.