If we cannot undo the past then we cannot have a right to be forgotten
In the year 2014, a series of landmark judgments by various courts of Europe started a new trend.
The cumulative impact of these landmark trends won the moniker of “right to be forgotten.”
Under this right, any citizen of European Union can ask Google and other search engines to
remove unnecessary or inadequate information from the internet. The authorities at Google
respected these judgments given by various courts. A systematic literature review of various
reports related to these judgments also gives us an idea that many individuals are using these
judgments as a tort case and contesting for some demands that can be termed as unfair (Doubek,
2018).
Google refused to accept “right to be forgotten” as a norm because according to them it is a
violation of the natural principle of “limit free speech.” The present case can also be compared
with the issues related to the “net neutrality.” In principle, many countries opposed to the
practice of net neutrality because it was a direct attack on the democracy of the internet. Data
regulatory authorities of many countries also promoted the concept of conditional net neutrality.
The case of China V/S Google is an extreme example of this practice.
The promoters of the “right to be forgotten” are also using two important terms that were present
in the ruling given in some of the court judgments. These two words are, “irrelevant” and
“outdated.” Many judgments given by the courts used these two words and gave way to a
universal dictum that Google and other search engines should remove all the information which
is irrelevant or outdated. With due respect to the verdicts of the court, a common man can ask a
question related to the reference of and contexts of these two words “irrelevant” and “outdated
(Chadwik, 2018).”
In order to understand the meaning of the words “irrelevant” and “outdated”, we can refer to the
case of an anonymous person who requested to delist 300 articles. In the year 2002, this person
was booked for numerous fraud cases in the UK. Media took the attention of it and in order to
spread awareness about a bad fish they published more than 300 articles about him, later on this
person requested Google to delist these articles because he was found not guilty in the case
(Moore, 2018). He produced documents supporting his innocence (Bowcott, 2018). On his
request Google delisted 293 articles; however, soon they realized that they committed a mistake
because the documents produced by the gentleman were forged documents. As a result Google
once again restored all the posts against him (Greene, 2019).
When we have a synoptic view of the applications received by the Google and other search
engines, we find an astonishing number of applications, during the month of the march in the
year 2017 Google received four hundred thousand applications of delisting. Considering the fact
that Google and other search engines put down a lot of effort in searching the validity of the
various news articles and other contents. Entertaining four hundred thousand of applications
during the week can become a herculean task for them. Any such exercise can kill the essence of
the internet as a universal medium (Marsh, 2019).
Right to be forgotten can be challenged by many other rights, for instance, the right of the public
to know the matter of their interest cannot be abolished. Google and many other search engines

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Assignment On Series Of Landmark Judgments By Various Courts Of Europe

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