Ctrl + Z
The Right to Be Forgotten
by Meg Leta Jones
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Pub Date Mar 29 2016 | Archive Date Aug 09 2016
Description
A gripping insight into the digital debate over data ownership, permanence and policy
“This is going on your permanent record!” is a threat that has never held more weight than it does in the Internet Age, when information lasts indefinitely. The ability to make good on that threat is as democratized as posting a Tweet or making blog. Data about us is created, shared, collected, analyzed, and processed at an overwhelming scale. The damage caused can be severe, affecting relationships, employment, academic success, and any number of other opportunities—and it can also be long lasting.
One possible solution to this threat? A digital right to be forgotten, which would in turn create a legal duty to delete, hide, or anonymize information at the request of another user. The highly controversial right has been criticized as a repugnant affront to principles of expression and access, as unworkable as a technical measure, and as effective as trying to put the cat back in the bag. Ctrl+Z breaks down the debate and provides guidance for a way forward. It argues that the existing perspectives are too limited, offering easy forgetting or none at all. By looking at new theories of privacy and organizing the many potential applications of the right, law and technology scholar Meg Leta Jones offers a set of nuanced choices. To help us choose, she provides a digital information life cycle, reflects on particular legal cultures, and analyzes international interoperability. In the end, the right to be forgotten can be innovative, liberating, and globally viable.
Advance Praise
“With great thoughtfulness and insight, Meg Leta Jones’s Ctrl + Z explores the right to be forgotten, avoiding the exaggerations and dispelling the myths that often appear in debates about the issue. Fascinating and accessible, Ctrl + Z addresses all dimensions of the right to be forgotten—the law of different countries, the nature of the technology, and the arguments on each side. The result is a truly unforgettable book that grapples with the right to be forgotten with great nuance and erudition."—Daniel J. Solove, John Marshall Harlan Research Professor of Law, George Washington University
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781479881703 |
| PRICE | $89.00 (USD) |
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Featured Reviews
Darren I, Media/Journalist
In 2016 is anybody unaware that the Internet does not forget? Are we now accustomed to our every public (and often not-so-public) utterance or interaction being stored somewhere for later recall? Should we have the right to be forgotten and be a bit more in control?
The author of this fascinating book drops the reader right into the middle of the issue, looking at the implications of endless Internet memory and the risks that it can pose to us. Even if we believe we are doing nothing wrong today, who knows how it may look tomorrow. Our opinions and values can change over time plus we cannot be sure about the norms and values of the future or that of those looking back at our past. This is even before computers get involved, analysing our entire digital history, for sleights perceived and actual.
This is not a book for the paranoid, but a careful and sensitive treatment of a very serious subject, providing a broad range of viewpoints and noting suggested treatments such as the implementation of a legal right to be forgotten, that is to say the ability to hide, delete or anonymise information held about us. Of course, there will be resistance to this idea, both from government and big business. Data is, after all, a resource to be exploited. Clearly you don’t want a criminal being able to remove their records from a police computer system, but does my neighbour need to be able to see what I wrote 20 years ago during a possibly traumatic phase of life?
It is not necessarily a clear-cut binary decision. The use of stored data can also help us in our everyday lives. A lot of our digital footprint is going to be unimportant. Who cares if I used to look at legal cat pictures until I suddenly went pro-rabbit and eschewed all fluffy kittens. What’s the big deal if Google now shows more rabbit-orientated advertising than cats. However, maybe my political views have changed, maybe I have bought some products online that I’d rather not disclose to the world and his dog or maybe I wrote an angry letter to a local newspaper and now someone has taken offence. This is the problem. With a few clicks someone can build up a picture of me and maybe use that information against me. Maybe I suddenly don’t get that promotion, or that job or even lose my job, all because of a piece of data on the Internet. Heaven help me if I run for public office and someone drags up the embarrassing sort of stuff most younger people can write. You might be entitled to your opinion, but…
The author carefully steers the reader, noting that there are lots of nuances and much light and shade, yet she reflects and draws us towards a workable solution that could provide the means to be digitally forgotten which would be viable, innovative and arguably liberating. The book dispels many myths, corrects some misunderstandings and gets you thinking.
It was all very more-ish, quite impactful and highly recommendable. Even if you might not have anything to hide, someone else may and they deserve this protection and should get it, before it is too late.
Ctrl+Z: The Right to be Forgotten, written by Meg Leta Jones and published by NYU Press. ISBN 9781479881703. YYYYY
Jason W, Educator
As someone who teaches Computer-Mediated Communication, explaining to students the reality of the internet and how nothing is ever really deleted is an increasing problem in the 21st Century. I'm very thankful that the internet did not exist when I was a teenager or college student. This book reviews a serious topic that few really consider in the digital age.
Bonnie B, Educator
Do you ever Google yourself to see what others can find out about you? I do, in an effort to retain my privacy. In the modern age, "privacy" is losing its meaning, as more and more people publish all kinds of personal information online, thinking that it is safe there. It's not. CtrlZ makes that point in detail.
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