Research On "The Right To Be Forgotten"

In modern society, with the development of high technology, the Internet has been applied in every area of our life, such as politics, economy and our social life. In the Internet WEB 2.0 mode, new technologies like cloud computing and big data provide technical support for storing, sharing and accessing to information, and the microblogging, Wechat, Tencent QQ, MSN and other social platforms become popular. Under the environment of the Internet, a lot of personal information makes up different "personality images on the Internet", and some of the images are negative which are not want to be known by others. However, the whole world is running in a "memory pattern" since online information can be stored forever. That is to say, these images will not disappear, even cannot be reshaped sometimes. Obviously, it is hard to create a healthy information ecological environment without forgetting. Therefore, "the right to be forgotten" is put forward to keep a balance between the need of free development of personality and public benefits."The right to be forgotten" has been paid much attention and there are a lot of debate about it. This paper discusses and defines the connotation of the concept of "the right to be forgotten". Based on analyzing the background of "the right to be forgotten"--the Internet Age, presenting the status quo of legislation about "the right to be forgotten" in the EU and America and introducing the philosophical foundation of "the right to be forgotten" with historical analysis, the objectivity and necessity of "the right to be forgotten" is stressed. Combined with regulations and laws in existence, this paper defines "the right to be forgotten" from the perspective of the subject, the object and the content as following:When faced with online information which has been known by public and the information is not needed for legal causes any more, and the continued existence of the information may leave negative impact on subjects of personal information, the subjects of the information and their close relatives have the right to request the controller to delete or take measures to prevent further spread to avoid others browsing the information on the Internet. Besides, this paper analyses the reasons which caused the controversy on the legal attribute of "the right to be forgotten", and illustrates it as one of the rights of personality through demonstrating the specificity of information protected by "the right to be forgotten". What's more, under the background of traditional privacy view and legal environment at home, the boundary of the privacy in China should not be too wide and we need to admit the independence of personal information rights in civil law. Based on these two things, after analysing the controversial viewpoints at present, this paper believes that "the right to be forgotten" belongs to "the right of personality" and it is an important part of personal information rights. Finally, it is necessary to protect "the right to be forgotten" by personal information protection law according to the nature of "the right to be forgotten", however, personal information protection law in our country is still in legislative gap and relevant regulations are insufficiency, so this paper regards "the right to be forgotten" as a personal interest and protect it by tort liability law.