Imagine the ability to delete all digital evidence of an offensive blog post, photos of last weekendâs out-of-control party, or video of a regrettable prank you pulled years ago.
Upon your command, all reference to the material gone would disappear from the originating site, and be hidden from the clutches of content-hunting search engines.
Web users around the world may soon be able to exercise this so-called âright to be forgotten,â the power to selectively erase oneâs self from the Internet, thanks to a European directive that argues users should have total control over their online data.
Given the ubiquity of mobile technology, the idea of almost absolute data control sounds far-fetched. But, as The Telegraph reports, the âright to be forgottenâ could be implemented across Europe in two years or more -- a prospect stirring much debate.
The proposal to codify this right in EU data-protection law was delivered in late January by European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, who suggested citizens should be allowed to demand the removal of âpersonal dataâ from the Internet if thereâs no legitimate reason for keeping the material online.
For instance, the âright to be forgottenâ permits someone to wipe out embarrassing Facebook photos but does not allow them to scrub an accurate article from a newspaper archive.
Though Reding has insisted the goal isnât a âtotal erasure of history,â her proposal has stirred questions about whether the right amounts to censorship and goes against the idea of free speech.
Several European countries have privacy laws that allow citizens to correct or delete inaccurate information, but Redingâs proposal takes those laws a step further -- giving everyone the right to delete, even if the information is truthful.
According to The Telegraph, companies that do not comply with data removal requests could be liable for up to two per cent of their global income.
This puts major search engines such as Google and Yahoo in a difficult position, because although they do not host the offending information, they collect the content and reference it in searches.
Besides, as U.S. law professor Jeffrey Rosen writes in the July - August 2012 issue of The Atlantic, companies such as TigerText already allow web users to make data âdisappear,â though not to the extent outlined in Redingâs proposal.
Similarly, for a price, online reputation management companies will monitor the web for any potentially embarrassing personal information.
Privacy lawyer Fazila Nurani of PrivaTech Consulting notes that Canadian web users can currently limit the distribution of regrettable personal data; itâs difficult to erase altogether.
âOnce itâs out there itâs very difficult to rescind. Even if you do, it could have (already) filtered through various search engines,â she told ŰÎŰ´ŤĂ˝ Channel on Monday.
Even with Redingâs EU recommendations, questions about web host liability and personal responsibility remain. Thereâs also the issue of what happens when someone else posts potentially embarrassing material that involves you.
âWhen you think about it, the search engines are just hosters of the material, theyâre not the producers,â she said. âI think the only thing that someone can do is go after who put the content out there and sue them for putting it out there in the first place.â