Friday, February 24, 2012 at 12:12PM
Drew Wolfe

Is the Right to be Forgotten the Biggest Threat to Free Speech on the Internet?

"This Is Yesica, the tipsy one on the right. She's a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model from Argentina. She is very nice to look at."

"But if you live in Argentina, you can't look at her. Put Yesica's name in Yahoo! Argentina and what do you get? You get nothing. A blank. She's not there."

"Yesica and her lawyers have exercised a legal right now dubbed "The Right to Be Forgotten" that allows you to remove embarrassing pictures or information you put on the web — and do it permanently, totally. Which means you can tell Yahoo! or Google or Facebook, 'I don't want that there anymore. I want this to be forgotten. You have the image or the email or whatever in your computers. Remove it. And if you don't, you are breaking the law.'"

"Yesica demanded that Yahoo! remove certain pictures, and presumably a court has ordered Yahoo! to block Yesica searches while the two sides appeal."

Article originally appeared on WorldWideWolfe II (http://drewhwolfe.com/).
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