[john_b]

> "At the very least, I like the notion that a person should be able to have some level of control over what companies are allowed to access about them"

Yes, but how do the EU regulations in question promote this goal? Background checks still exist, as does the information about you online. These regulations only impose a small burden to finding the information (by eliminating the quickest and most convenient way of finding it). They offer the illusion of control and nothing more.

> "My current opinion (which is not yet fully formed) is that it is wrong to order Google to unlist results; but, on the other hand, it should be completely legal to order Google to remove what is essentially a dossier that they have on a particular user (at that user's request)."

Again, you're confusing things that are related but not the same. The information cannot be deleted. If Google learned something about you from public sources, that information is in the public domain and Google doesn't own or control it (though it may offer access to it). If it gained that information because you used one or more Google services, then Google has a right to use the information for purposes specified in the EULA.

If you want to have control over your information then the only way to accomplish that is to not give it away in the first place. Neither the individual in question nor Google have any ownership over information once it's public. The only question is how easy and convenient accessing that information should be.

It only benefits those who are already powerful to make access to information difficult. For example, a company can still find out if you were charged with a crime even if Google doesn't return results related to that event, but you will have a much harder time finding out if that company pollutes the environment (do you want to dig through EPA files or review past court cases against the company?) if news articles relevant to that topic have been expunged from search engines.

"The Right to be Forgotten" is just doublespeak for censorship. Selling it as an indispensable tool for personal privacy is a sickening irony.

[halosghost]

No. What you point out are not problems with the theoretical Right to be Forgotten, but rather the current implementations of it (which, like I wrote, I have not decided whether or not I can support at all).

Also, I said that it should be legal to order google to delete its stored profile of a user, not that it should have to delete the sources where it got that information from.

[kuschku]

The Right to be Forgotten only applies to people, not to corporations.

The idea is that the stuff you did as teen should not be public for everyone – a future employer, or neighbor, should not be able to find your drunk partying photos on the web (an actual issue currently, where employers openly suggest people to "just stop partying or stop using the web").