The Right to Digital Oblivion: Between Privacy and Information Freedom Essence and Legal Birth The right to digital oblivion (right to deletion, "right to be forgotten") is a legal concept that allows a person to demand the removal of outdated, irrelevant, or defamatory personal data from public access, primarily from search engines. This is not the absolute erasure of information from servers (which is often technically impossible), but its de-indexing from search results based on queries containing the applicant's name. The turning point was the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the case "Google Spain v. AEPD and Mario Costeja González" in 2014. The Spanish citizen Mario Costeja demanded the removal of links to newspaper articles from 1998 about the forced sale of his property for debts — the information was true but outdated and damaged his reputation. The Court recognized that search engines are "data processors" and should consider the balance between the right to privacy and the public interest. This decision laid the foundation for Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entered into force in 2018. Interesting fact: In the first 8 years of the right's existence (2014-2022), Google received more than 5.8 million requests for URL deletion in Europe, of which approximately 45% were granted. This demonstrates a huge social demand for "digital rebooting". Ethical and Social Conflict: Two Fundamental Rights The right to oblivion is based on a deep legal and ethical conflict between: The right to private life and personal development (Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights). The freedom of expression and the right of society to information (Article 10 of the same convention). Advocates of the right to oblivion argue that the internet, with its eternal memory, deprives people of the opportunity to start life with a clean slate ("forgive and forget"). Outdated or insignificant information creates a "digital sha ... Read more