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Abstract The right to be forgotten stemmed from people's worry about the challenges posed to their privacy by the development of information technologies like the digital storage and cloud computing .Since technological development entails the easy storage and access of personal information,people have to worry that their lives are constantly under digital surveillance,that their privacy might be exposed unknowingly and that the information they are unwilling to spread might exist on the network permanently,for all these privacy and information might be accessed by others,which might negatively impact the personal image and dignity they strive to construct and maintain .On this account,the EU proposed in 1995 the concept of″the right to be forgotten″ in the law of data protection .However,debates on this issue never ceased .In May 2014,the Supreme Court of EU ruled that users can delete their names or relevant history from the resulting web pages of the search engine . From the perspective of justice,such a decision established the utility of″the right to be forgotten .″According to this rule,users have the right to ask the search engine to hide specific entries in the search results . The main argument against″the right to be forgotten″is its vague explanation .Although there is a general agreement that it is necessary to block false information by law,what″the right to be forgotten″does is to remove the information the person concerned regards as unpleasant rather than false .The exercise of this right will undoubtedly restrict public access to historical information and harm the freedom of expression,as the law does not need to protect past wrong doings,and these people do not have adequate reasons to request the deletion of unpleasant information to make others forget their wrong speech and behavior .Another major concern is that deleting such a large amount of information will greatly increase the operating cost of the big-data companies,which will in turn negatively and unfairly affect the development of the digital economy .On June 26,2014,Google announced that based on the rule of European Court of Justice,they started to delete certain search results in order to protect″the right to be forgotten .″But such deletion is only confined to the European websites,like Google .de of Germany and Google .fr of France,which means people all around the world,including other countries of EU,can still use Google's global website Google .com to access these controversial links .EU,on the other hand,continues to emphasize that″the right to be forgotten″should be implemented globally . However,on February 7,2015,Google's eight-member advisory committee published a report that confining the implementation of″the right″inside EU conforms to the EU decision,acknowledging that the extension of″the right″to the globe will probably ensure″more effective protection of the rights of the data subject .″ The accessibility,durability and comprehensiveness of digital memory pose a serious challenge to humans .The oncoming digitalization of our everyday life ushers in an era when our privacy can hardly be guaranteed .To some extent,″the right to be forgotten″provides a solution to the digital alienation,but flaws remain .
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Received: 09 August 2014
Published: 28 February 2015
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