How does California’s Erasure Law stack up against the EU’s right to be forgotten?
This article was written by Shaudee Dehghan for IAPP and was originally published April 17, 2018 here. It provides an analysis of the California ¨Online Erase Law¨v. the EU right to be forgotten. The article predates the passage of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and, therefore, makes no reference to the right to erase under CCPA. It is being re-published to Golden Data with the author´s consent.
While most are familiar with the European Union’s right to be forgotten, fewer are aware that in 2015, California enacted the Online Eraser Law, which many are touting as the “Right To Be Forgotten Lite” as it allows minors to “erase” their content online. But, is California’s law actually RTBF Lite? Here’s how it stacks up against the European Union’s right to be forgotten.
The European right to be forgotten is grounded in the belief that individuals should have autonomy over their online presence without being repeatedly stigmatized as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past. The right’s emergence, and what many consider its foundational beginnings, was Article 12 of the Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) where a data subject’s right to request and obtain access to personal data and object to its processing were first recognized.