>I never understood how anyone thinks being forgotten is a right. Wrong, false, liable, limited set of privacy related information should be correctable, removable

It becomes a right when enough people in a democratic society want it to be one, it's that simple. People in Europe believe that the right of individuals to control information about themselves and to not be stigmatized for actions in the past is to be valued higher than public access to it.

I perceive the US attitude simply as a sort of voyeurism. We already know it well from celebrity culture where people's entire lives are picked apart and put on a platter for the public to drool over, I have no interest of seeing it expanded to everyone, so I'm thankful for legislation to give me at least some control over information about me.

The biggest beneficiaries of this might very well be children who have had their entire lives put on the net by their parents without even having the slightest say in it.

>It becomes a right when enough people in a democratic society want it to be one, it's that simple.

That's not what a right is; a right is something that some logical/philosophical moral argument has detetermined people should have, regardless of what other people think. That is the whole point of rights in the US constitution: to protect people against the government and the "tyrrany of the majority". Otherwise you could call something like "the right of the German people to have no Jews within one kilometre nearby" a right if the majority voted on it, and the term loses all meaning.

this lockean discourse about natural rights and common law and republicanism isn't really a thing in Europe. It's very US specific, Europeans in general don't believe that their constitutions (if they even have one) are quasi sacred texts.

At the end of the day rights and laws are expression of preferences of the public. Europeans have different privacy rights because they want to have them. That doesn't mean they can't be good or bad, but they don't need to be derived from some higher realm of reason.

I'd disagree with that. Check out how many European countries have an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_clause.

"The German eternity clause (German: Ewigkeitsklausel) is Article 79 paragraph (3) of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Grundgesetz). The eternity clause establishes that certain fundamental principles of Germany's democracy can never be removed, even by parliament.[6]"

"The Parlamentarischer Rat (Parliamentary Council) included the eternity clause in its Basic Law specifically to prevent a new "legal" pathway to a dictatorship as was the case in the Weimar Republic with the Enabling Act of 1933.[7]"

That’s a pretty specific implementation detail of a few specific democracies that doesn’t really refute anything that the parent comment said.

Like, for example, in the UK (which entirely lacks a formal constitution) the right to govern is literally derived from the most divine source: god himself, through his agent, the Queen.

In practice, despite the quasi-sacred and divine foundations of our government it doesn’t mean jack. If the Queen where to exercise any of her divine powers over the will of the current Parliament it would cause a constitutional crisis and she would have those powers immediately stripped.

Which only proves that Germany is indeed very sensible to how governments can degenerate under demagogic movements.

Recognizing that democracies can be infected does not mean that they must hold to some sacred text. It just mean that some path are considered too dangerous to even be considered.

Only under post-modern, fully secular humanist conceptions of rights.

There are human rights, civil rights and simple mere rights by law.

Also in the whole concept of criminal justice of most modern countries criminals that have completed their sentences are by default considered with a clean history unless relevant)

European correction system doesn't believe in turning each small crime into a life sentence of marginalization and punishment. Which is why we don't have to lock up a huge chunk of population into cages for life - letting people resume their lives after serving their punishment significantly reduces the amount of returning convicts and makes society a safer place.

> Wrong, false, liable, limited set of privacy related information should be correctable, removable

Which is exactly what the law is for.

The examples in the article were deceptively reported. For example, the doctor who asked The Guardian to take down articles about her suspension: she had successfully appealed that case, and a judge overturned her suspension and ordered the record expunged: her name was dragged through the mud on bad information.

Compare that to the US where any kind of accusation, even if it turns out to be false, can easily permanently ruin someone's job, career prospects, or life.

You can sue for libel in US as well as in Europe.

That is not going to give your career back, a few news site still have their wrong reporting on Nick Sandmann.

Well, I think it is a bit more complicated. Humans typically do not remember as good as machines. So the intention is probably to bring the internet experience closer to the real-life experience. And the GDPR doesn't seem to make a difference between embarrassing Youtube videos and simple facts about what someone did (would probably take decades in court to make such a distinction).

Nevertheless, it seems, the real problem isn't the impossibility of achieving such a 'delete-from-the-internet' mechanism, but rather the low value for average people and the high value for deceitful individuals.

I mean, I like having a legal right to make Google/Facebook/E Corp delete all the data they have about me and my usage, but there will be few occasions when I will make use of that right and even fewer for people who don't even care what they share online. Imposters, on the other hand, will find that right most valuable.

Sometimes only "mistake" you do is to be born into wrong minority.

Also in lot of countries punishment is more of a corrective action not revenge. This means even convicted criminals have right to hide convivtion after some time.

Agree, and it doesn't even exist in most domains. I can't expunge my school transcripts or information from credit bureaus.

Do we really think a society where there is no public information about people better?

You can, any bankruptcy information expires after 7? years, and school records aren't public.

Which country in Europe are you from that school transcripts are public?

That's a fair point. It isn't public information.

But, GDPR applies to any information, even if it isn't available publicly.

But it does not apply to governments

Credit bureau information tends to expire off the record over time doesn't it?