Not Just One, But Many ‘Rights to Be Forgotten’. A Global Status Quo.

Abstract

Since being first developed through the case law of the European Court of Justice, the Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) has continued to rapidly evolve and has recently moved beyond its European borders. In recent times, the RTBF has started to be hotly debated and litigated in Latin America. This paper describes the wide spectrum of interpretations the RTBF has had across countries and data protection authorities. This paper does not discuss European or Latin American judgments themselves, but analyses and compares the relevant cases within each jurisdiction by looking at four key variables. The analysis of the cases showed that there is no unified or coordinated approach to the RTBF. This is especially true at the level of the defendants involved, that is, whether it involved the local subsidiary or the parent company, and whether the order of removal had local or 'global' effects, meaning the removal of content or access was addressed to local domains or from the global domain. This last issue is paramount, since it will determine whether a order of removal would leave content available and accessible for anyone outside of the jurisdiction of the authority who orders the removal, or whether the content becomes inaccessible to everyone everywhere.

Keywords: right to be forgotten, conflict of laws, pirvate international law, data protection, search engines, European law, EU Law, comparative law, law of the internet, RTBF, right to privacy

JEL Classification: K33, K39