Freedom of expression and the Right to be Forgotten

Abstract

The right to freedom of expression is recognized as one of the fundamental rights for the free development of the personality, together with image, honor, and private life. However, with the advent of technology, personal information began to be widely disseminated, mainly by the mass media and, at the present time, on social networks, being published by the data holder himself. The Right to Oblivion appears as an answer and a limitation when the disclosure of this personal information makes it impossible for the data holder to have his daily life in a normal way. Since 1890, in the United States of America, with the concern of the invention of the photographic camera that could invade the privacy of ordinary people, the idea of privacy, applied to the Malvin Vs. Reid, from 1931 in California, where a limitation on the disclosure of a film that invades a family's privacy applies. Later in the famous Lebach case in Germany, where for the first time a constitutional court ruled in favor of limiting freedom of expression and freedom of communication. With the establishment of the constitutional principle of informational self-determination and with the advent of the General Data Protection Regulation with the provision of the Right to Oblivion expressly, in art. 17, the German’s Federal Court of Justice recognized that the Right to be Forgotten and Freedom of Expression and Communication are fundamental rights, but not absolute, and it is up to the court that is judging in the specific case which of these rights should prevail.