Voices on Law

  In 2020, the High Court of Orissa examined the right of a rape victim to be forgotten from the internet, where the court stated, “…information in the public domain is like toothpaste, once it is out of the tube one can’t get it back in and once the information is in the public domain it will never go away” [1] In a time driven by technology, where information about ‘everybody’ is at the tip of fingers, imagine having consent and control over ‘how much information’ and ‘what kind of information’ any third-party witness about you. In an era of digital permanence, having an unsaid gem in your fundamental right that helps you remove any trace, subject to restrictions, of you from the internet. That right is, RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN. Right to be forgotten (RTBF) allows individuals (data subjects) to request that their personal information be removed from the Internet (not show up in search engine searches), and seeks to give individual’s increased control over their personal infor...