A Study On The Right To Be Forgotten

The arrival of the era of big data puts higher requirements on the protection of personal information.The right to be forgotten as an emerging right in the field of personal information protection has an independent value in the protection of personal interests.It is beneficial to people's control of personal information,safeguarding their personal dignity,and getting rid of negative information affecting themselves.The right to be forgotten has the characteristics of active defense and specific objects which is different from some traditional rights of personality such as the right of privacy and reputation.Although China has not yet established the system of rights to be forgotten,it is feasible to do so since there has been the basis of relevant laws and regulations and judicial practice.The right to be forgotten refers to the right of the information subjects to request the information controller to delete the negative information related to themselves that has been published on the internet and has troubled their real life.It is similar with rights of personality right property,at the same time,the relative right attribute should belong to the claim of the personality right.So it cannot be considered as an independent specific personality right.It based on personal information right,it can be used as a right of delete personal information.We must establish a complete legal system for the protection of personal information initially in order to introduce the right to be forgotten.The subject of the right to be forgotten is the natural person,excluding legal persons and other organizations.Those subjects can be divided into three categories.The first category is general citizens who can enjoy the right to be forgotten in the full sense;the second category is minors who can enjoy the right of priority when they need protection;the third category is public figures whose negative information may arouse reasonable public concern or be with high news value are not protected by the right to be forgotten.The obligatory entity of the right to be forgotten is the information controller and they can be divided into two categories.One is the information controller who publicly publishes personal negative information.They not only has to bear the obligation of deletion,but also has the obligation to inform other information controllers.The other is general information controllers who only need to fulfill the corresponding deletion obligations.The object of the legal nexus is the real negative information existing on the internet by which people can distinguish the subjects' identification.The subjects have the right to request the information controller to delete their personal negative information while bear the deletion cost at the same time.The information controllers have the obligation to delete the negative information and enjoy the right to require the subjects to bear the cost of deletion.The application of the right to be forgotten will inevitably conflict with freedom of speech and the public's right to know.The key to solve the problem is weighing interests.In order to ensure the balance of interests,it is necessary to follow the principle of individual handling,proportionality and priority protection of minors in the weighing process.