The 'right to be forgotten' can too easily become the ability to be censored | Dan Gillmor

Everyone does stupid things. But we shouldn't all have the right to pick which parts of our history get deleted from the internet

When I was in my 20s, I played music for a living and hung around with some, uh, interesting people. I'm grateful that today's social media didn't exist back then. (No, I'm not going to explain exactly why – use your imagination.)

So is it hypocritical to object to the European Union's new requirement that Google remove links from its search display upon people's demands? Again, no – but not because it's a bad idea, in theory, for some things to be forgotten in a world where almost everything is remembered. Google has no choice but to comply with this legal requirement in one of its biggest markets, and you can be sure this kind of interference will spread. But we need updated norms far more than legal measures.

The implications are enormous since if a Canadian court has the power to limit access to information for the globe, presumably other courts would as well. While the court does not grapple with this possibility, what happens if a Russian court orders Google to remove gay and lesbian sites from its database? Or if Iran orders it remove Israeli sites from the database? The possibilities are endless since local rules of freedom of expression often differ from country to country. Yet the BC court adopts the view that it can issue an order with global effect.