The Right to be Forgotten: Erasing the Past, Unequally (105)
Have you ever tried to Google yourself and wished you could erase an embarrassing link or an old mistake from search results? When Spanish citizen Mario Costeja González successfully sued to remove a decade-old newspaper clipping about his past debts, he secured a landmark 2014 European Union ruling: the digital “Right to Be Forgotten.” But while celebrated as a victory for personal privacy, allowing individuals to selectively scrub history introduces profound economic and societal risks. When high-risk individuals can conceal past defaults or misconduct, how do we protect the public from opportunistic history-laundering? If hiding information forces decision-makers to rely on imperfect—or even discriminatory—proxies, where is the line between human redemption and rewriting reality?
Join us for a conversation with Christopher S. Yoo, the Imasogie Professor in Law and Technology at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, holding joint appointments at the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Computer and Information Science. One of the nation’s leading authorities on technology law, regulatory policy, and Internet governance, he helps us unpack the economics of hidden information, the limits of digital erasure, and the delicate balance between personal privacy and the public good.
Hosted by: Alexa Raad and Leslie Daigle.
Further reading:
- The Guardian (Landmark Ruling Article): EU Court Backs ‘Right to be Forgotten’: Google Must Amend Results on Request
- Yoo, Christopher S., The Overlooked Systemic Impact of the Right to Be Forgotten: Lessons from Adverse Selection, Moral Hazard, and Ban the Box (University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Research Paper No. 22-25) SSRN Link
- EU Case Law: Google Spain SL v. Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD), Case C-131/12 (Court of Justice of the European Union, 2014)
- EU Regulation: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Regulation (EU) 2016/679, Article 17 (“Right to erasure / ‘right to be forgotten'”)
- Statistical Discrimination Research: Agan, Amanda & Starr, Sonja, Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Racial Discrimination: A Field Experiment, Quarterly Journal of Economics (2018)
- U.S. First Amendment Precedent: Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U.S. 552 (U.S. Supreme Court, 2011)
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