The Unwanted Paradoxes Of the Right to Be Forgotten

Abstract

The dynamic development of digital and informational technologies raises the issue of proper and effective protection of human privacy, which, in turn, is gradually turning from a real fundamental right into a kind of illusion. Just a piece of information about an individual distributed on the Internet may leave its negative and often indelible mark on the life and reputation of the addressee of such information, regardless of the legality and reliability of such information. And even if such information is subsequently recognized as false and/or vicious and even removed from public access, the addressee of the information will still be associated with such information in the social consciousness. In this regard, each person is at risk on the Internet, where anyone can potentially become the victim of a single publication or a post of an Internet user. In this context the emergence of the phenomenon of the right to be forgotten in European legal reality may be considered as a step forward in the question of human privacy protection in the digital age. However, this right is not without drawbacks. The most significant of these drawbacks will be analyzed in this paper, such as the practical difficulties of thoroughly exercising this right and the difficulties posed by new technological developments.