Zeitschrift für Zivil- und Rechtswissenschaften

Abstrakt

The Resilient Internet

McKay Cunningham

Many commentators laud European privacy law as a vital protection in the Internet age. They hail the “right to be forgotten” as necessary to individual privacy. Conversely, commentators on the other side champion free expression and highlight the censorship threat implicit within the right to be forgotten. But few have discussed the practicalities. The right to be forgotten, as applied, is not working. As soon as European law strips content from Google searches, for example, that content is added back into the cyber commons through alternative avenues. The controversy, in other words, may be theoretical only, since implementation of the “right to be forgotten” falters against Internet resilience. This paper suggests that European policymakers failed to confirm their privacy law to the Internet’s architecture. They failed to account for the borderless flow of information, leaving the ongoing controversy over free expression and censorship moot.