Mr. A was greatly astonished during the job interview. The sly interviewer had croaked, “You posted something really funny, sonny” and showed him his immature post from high school. Miss. B was really disappointed at her blind date. The guy had strangely known her exact tastes, but it was because he had researched her on the web. “I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life.” This is President Obama’s advice on that matter. To us, living in the social media era, there is nothing we can hide, so it is best to not post anything you might regret. However, trying to delete one’s information on the internet is slowly being elevated to a right. This is the right to be forgotten. -Ed.



In the movie, Men In Black, Will Smith performs as a secret agent hunting down dangerous aliens. He deletes the memories of civilians who have unintentionally witnessed the scene by using a device called the Neuralyzer.


● What is it?

  The ‘right to be forgotten’ is the right to be able to request the deletion of internet information about oneself. Conflicts occur because the personal information belongs to an individual, but the authority of deletion belongs to the internet company.

● The history and present of the right

  The right to be forgotten became a world issue after a Spanish lawyer, Mario Gonzalez, filed a suit with the European Court of Justice. He requested that a link about his foreclosed house be deleted. The court declared Google had to erase the links due to privacy invasion. This decision was the first case to admit the right to be forgotten, and later, Europe guaranteed the right by a law.
  On the other hand, the American lawyer Calvin Jackson lost his lawsuit against Google. He too requested that a link be deleted. The link was about his past, defending an infamous liquor company. The US appellate court declared that deleting it would violate ‘the right to know’ and sided with Google. This decision well represents a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
  While the EU approves the right regarding privacy invasions, the US rejects it due to the violation of the ‘right to know’. Which side will South Korea stand on? Our country is implementing legislation this June that would enable people to delete internet information about themselves. It blocks the post if one cannot delete it themselves due to the member’s withdrawal or if the web administrator does not allow it. However, South Korea’s solution does not allow one to delete a post that a third person had uploaded regarding oneself. Therefore, our country stands with the European Union, but it doesn’t have as powerful a solution.

● The 3 demerits of the right

  According to internet companies like Google, it is impossible to perfectly delete certain posts. Also, those companies have to pay a huge amount of fees for dealing with complaints and requests. The right to be forgotten may also violate fundamental human rights such as ‘the freedom of expression’ and ‘the right to know’. By allowing anyone to prohibit information upon their request, the freedom of expression may not be upheld. In addition, ordinary citizens may lose their right to know, due to the fact that the law-friendly powerful men may be advantageous in utilizing the right to be forgotten.

● The awareness of people about the right to be forgotten

  The right to be forgotten has been a controversial issue which has received great attention from the media since the Gonzalez affair in 2009. Many people have utilized their new right actively to hide their pasts from others’ eyes. However, Koreans are particularly unaware of this issue and do not feel the necessity of the right. It is because Korea has a stricter libel law than foreign countries, so people don’t need to delete the links when there’s already a manner of deleting the original texts. However, the libel law is usually exploited by public figures in order to manage their reputation and citizens are somewhat hindered to utilize the law. This June, when the government’s agenda takes effect, will be the time for Koreans to consider in depth about the right to be forgotten.
  Many experts also endeavor to awaken people that it is easy to upload data but hard to delete it. Lee Sang-jin, a professor of Korea University’s Graduate School of Information Security, advised   students.“Our everyday lives stay only in the memories of people who were at the same place and the memory is forgotten naturally. Therefore, we take pictures to retain our memories and we sometimes trash them if we don’t want to have them anymore. However, if our pictures of our daily lives are uploaded on cyberspace, a number of people can see them in an instant and the pictures are occasionally spread throughout the internet sites that we aren’t familiar with and we will not be able to control the spread.”

● Essential vocabulary about the right to be forgotten

  Digital Undertaker: They perform a duty of deleting posts that customers do not want to see anymore. Their works are largely divided into two categories. First, they hold a digital funeral. It means deleting every internet record of deceased people. The other work they do is managing reputations. They protect private information of people who are suffering from vicious rumors or comments.
  The MC Mong Affair: One question about a military service and his tooth problem was uploaded on the portal site Naver in 2005, and people later found out that it had been a question posted by MC Mong, the singer who dodged the draft. Due to the Naver policy that does not acknowledge the right to be forgotten, we can still read the post and leave comments.
  Streisand Effect: It is the spreading of information due to an adverse effect of an effort to delete or censor public information. There was a coastline picture taken by the government of California and the house of a singer, Streisand, was taken. Streisand argued that her privacy was invaded and asked for a compensation of 58.5 billion won from the state government. However, her house became much more famous after being reported on the news, and she even lost the case.
  DAS: The word stands for Digital Aging System, and it means the technology that automatically deletes your posts after the predetermined time you’ve set. An American mobile messenger ‘Snapchat’ has a similar system that allows your messages to be automatically deleted.

By Kim Su-hyun
sh37@cbnu.ac.kr
By Lee Sang-yi
sy36@cbnu.ac.kr