The court of justice of the European Union has recently created a new ruling based on a 1995 draft. This ruling forces companies such as Google to remove out-dated information and allows users to request information to be deleted.
The right to be forgotten ruling has already been criticised by the Committees of the House of Lords and Wikipedia. They both claim the draft is far to out-dated and technology has progressed since then.
Other companies have said that this rule has not considered that of smaller companies such as search engines. Smaller companies might not have the resource to process thousands of requests to remove all this data.
Guidelines for deleting information could be too vague and is leaving users discomforted that companies can judge information in this manor. The founder of Wikipedia said, “Google must not be left to censor history”.
The committee of the house of lords are trying to contact the government so the regulations update will no longer have anything to do with the Right to be forgotten ruling. The Committee also would like it to not include the “right to erasure” made by the European Parliament.
However this could be a good thing as well, with companies such as Google holding so much information. Removing out-dated information would help users find current content that they know is still valid.
It would also provide server space to house other information, which could save those companies large amounts of money in the future. Customers can request to have information removed so it will help give security to those that need it.
The ruling has not been passed yet and may not be passed with so many criticisms. However many users say that they would want their information to be deleted permanently. Would you want to permanently delete your information on the web?