Introduction

Individuals should have the right to “determine the development of their life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatized as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past.” - Alessandro Mantelero, Professor of Law¹

Today, thirty years after the beginnings of the world wide web, the accumulation of personal information gathered by search engines and other internet service providers has created the need to have some of this information removed in order to preserve individual autonomy and promote equal opportunities for individual - hence collective - realization and growth. The right to be forgotten is the right to have information about a person removed from search engine results and other directories under some circumstances. In Europe, the right to be forgotten is a fundamental right protected by the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR). A version of this right is protected under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Protection has been proposed in New York through New York State Senate Assembly Bill A5323 (2017-2018). This paper discusses how these three jurisdictions treat the right to be forgotten, explains why California does not go as far as Europe in protecting this right, and asks whether the proposed New York law can guarantee more protection than California law.

Footnotes