LEGITIMITY OF THE RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN
The existence of the fundamental right to be forgotten bases its legitimacy on the right of the affected person to live in peace and protected from personal information that circulates on the Internet, regardless of whether it may be true, false or outdated.
By exercising their right to oppose the aforementioned information —that is, ensuring that their information is not accessible (deindexed, unlinked) through Internet search engines—, the affected party also manages to avoid the violation of their rights to honor, to a good reputation, to the development of his free personality, among others. It should be taken into account that the violations can even be systematic.
SOURCES WHERE TO NOTIFY YOUR VIOLATION
There is no doubt about the necessary knowledge on the part of the affected person of the virtual place or places where the existence of published information can be consulted that, eventually, violates the right to be forgotten. Otherwise, that is, in the face of ignorance or incomplete management of the sources of consultation, the unrestricted defense of our right to be forgotten would be undermined.
In this sense, we have as online data sources, which may or may not be linked to search engines : i) social networks, ii) public powers and iii) digital media.
THE RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN IN JURISPRUDENCE
The fact that the legislation does not even refer to the recognition of the right to be forgotten does not imply that the courts cannot ignore the right to the corresponding effective procedural protection.
In that sense, we will briefly review some cases of the world, which date in this regard:
In Italian jurisprudence, the case resolved by the Ordinance of the Rome Court of May 6, 1983 (FI 1984, I, 299) is well known, which prudentially prohibited the broadcast on television of a documentary film about the death, one afternoon of 1977, by the famous “Lazio” football player, Lucciano Re Cecconi. The athlete, wanting to play a prank on a jeweler friend, who had been robbed several times, in the company of other people, went to his store and, when his back was turned, yelled at him: "This is a robbery", to which he he answered, turning and firing a shot at him that ended his life, without having time to recognize it. The jeweler was accused by the Public Prosecutor, who requested three years in prison, being acquitted in the criminal trial, held a month later, when the defense of acting in legitimate defense was appreciated google diritto all'oblio dall'italia.
It should be noted that the jeweler requested that the documentary not be broadcast because it violated his right to privacy and honor. The court did not consider that the right to privacy was worthy of protection because what happened had not been a private event, but rather belonged to the public sphere. However, it did consider that the plaintiff's honor was being attacked because, contrary to the truth, "absolutely negative physical and psychological characteristics were attributed to him", also describing him as a character "obsessed with money, arrogant, fragile, from an emotional, petty, sadistic and violence-prone point of view.” Mainly, the Court considered worrying that in the documentary “no reference was made to the acquittal sentence” .
Then we have another case:
(...) the judgment of the Italian Court of Cassation, of April 5, 2012 (NGCC 2012, I, 836), has resolved a dispute related to a file hosted on the website of a newspaper, in which the old news of the arrest for corruption of a politician, who would later be acquitted (...) in the case of news contained in historical archives of newspapers that can be accessed online, the subject concerned must be given the possibility of contextualizing and updating the information, through its connection with others, subsequently published, in particular that relating to his acquittal. Thus, it affirms that although the information given was true at the time of the original publication of the news, its subsequent storage in a historical archive must be carried out,.
Also, mentioning Italy, we have:
(...) the Judgment of the Court of Cassation, of April 9, 1998 (FI 1998, I, 1834), has explicitly admitted the right to be forgotten. More recently, the judgment of the same Court, of April 5, 2012 (NGCC 2012, I, 836), affirms that, if the public interest in freedom of information limits the right to privacy, nevertheless, the subject concerned , for the sake of the free development of their personality, they are recognized as having the right to be forgotten, that is, not to subsequently divulge news that, due to the passage of time, is already forgotten or ignored by the generality of people. This, provided that there is no public interest in their current consent, for reasons of a historical, educational or cultural nature, or, more generally, because a social interest in said knowledge persists .
