Research On The ‘Right To Be Forgotten' In The Era Of Big Data

‘The right to be forgotten' is a civil right that allows data subject to request the controller to delete or block the personal data from the internet.‘The right to be forgotten' was originally derived from the traditional concept of privacy in European.And then the EU recognized this right in both legislation and judiciary from 2012 to 2016.As an emerging right under the era of big data,it's important to define the attribute of ‘the right to be forgotten' first.The object of ‘the right to be forgotten' is personal data,which contains the most basic value of personal dignity and personal freedom.Therefore,according to the civil right system,‘the right to be forgotten' should belong to the personality rights,and it should be protected by a specific personality right.In the category of specific personality rights,the personal information is most closely related to ‘the right to be forgotten'.Therefore,it is theoretically feasible to include it in the category of the personal information.The subject of ‘the right to be forgotten' is data subject,which should be limited to ordinary natural person,excluding legal person.The subject of the obligation is data controller,including but not limited to the search engine operator.The object of ‘the right to be forgotten' is personal data which means any information relating to an identified natural person.‘The right to be forgotten' will conflict with other interests like freedom of expression and the right of access during the exercise,so it is necessary to balance the interests.While balancing those interests,we need to combine a variety of factors,including the identity of the data subject,the nature of the data,the source of the data,time and so on.With the rapid development of Internet technology and big data,the traditional data privacy protection mechanism seems to be insufficient to meet the needs of personal data protection in the era of big data.In particular,the eternal memory of the Internet makes it difficult for data subject to be forgotten in cyberspace.In this context,we should pay attention to the role and significance of ‘the right to be forgotten'.We can construct a system from the Civil Law level or Personal Information Protection Law level,and systematically construct it under the principles of proportionality and case-by-case measurement.Meanwhile,we can also set up data protection institutions which can be learned from the experience of comparative law,strengthen the construction of data technology,and form a new mechanism for data privacy protection in the era of big data.