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Abstract

What ethical relationships should we forge among freedom of personal expression, the public’s right to know, privacy, and control of information about us? That is the crux of the right to be forgotten. What makes the right to be forgotten creative is that, for most of history, people have struggled to be remembered. To create a legal right to remove oneself from the public record is rather revolutionary. It is also an idea that captures the current Zeitgeist — or “spirit of the times.” In a sense, this idea encapsulates Andy Warhol’s quip about everyone being briefly famous, except the fame may not be for something we want to be famous for, and the afterlife of our fame may continue indefinitely.

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© 2016 Seana Moran and Christopher Charles Canieso

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Canieso, C.C. (2016). The Right to Be Forgotten. In: Ethical Ripples of Creativity and Innovation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137505545_22

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