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15 Chi.-Kent J. Int'l & Comp. L. 1 (2015)

handle is hein.journals/chkjicl15 and id is 1 raw text is: Google v. Spain: A Right To Be Forgotten? Ignacio Cofone* Abstract The comment shows that the recent decision in Google v. Spain does not rule on the right to be forgotten, but rather on the liability of search engines under the rights and obligations established in the Data Protection Directive. It then makes a brief evaluation on the case arguing that the decision fails to offer a consistent balance between the right to privacy and the freedom of expression. Introduction The right to be forgotten was popularized in the public debate by Mayer-Schonberger's book Delete.' The book argued that one of the main problems with data storage is that it lacks the human characteristic of forgetting.2 The book also introduced the right to forget, proposing that all information should have an expiration date.3 Policymakers, especially in the European Union (EU), were sympathetic to the concept.4 The right to be forgotten extends to the internet the old French droit a l'oubli and the Italian diritto al' oblio regarding criminal records- sometimes called right to oblivion, and literally translatable as right to forget. Both rights were affirmed by courts based on the constitutional dispositions stating that prison has the aim of social reinsertion, and it is in the interest of both social reinsertion and the privacy of people who were * Erasmus University Rotterdam (European Doctorate in Law and Economics). I am grateful to Tobias Hlobil, Stephan Michel, Sharon Oded, Pablo del Rio and Ann-Sophie Vandenberghe for helpful comments and discussions. The standard disclaimer applies. Contact: cofonealaw.eur.nl. Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 1 Some precedents can be seen before that in reviews of European legal thought regarding privacy. See e.g. David H. Flaherty, Controlling Surveillance: Can Privacy Protection be Made Effective?, in TECHNOLOGY & PRIVACY: THE NEW LANDSCAPE 167, 172 (Philip E. Agre and Marc Rotenberg eds., Cambridge, MIT press, 1998); Jean-Frangois Blanchette & Deborah G. Johnsson, Data Retention and the Panoptic Society: the Social Benefits of Forgetfulness, 18(1) THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 33 (2002). 2 See Viktor Mayer-Schinberger, DELETE: THE VIRTUE OF FORGETTING IN THE DIGITAL AGE 92-127 (2009). 3 See id. at 169-195. 4 See Jeffrey Rosen, The Right to be Forgotten, 64 STANFORD LAW REVIEW ONLINE 88, 89 (2012).

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