Conference Paper: “Online News and Privacy: Are Online News Archives Affected by a ‘Right to be Forgotten’?”

Here’s the full-text of a paper that will be presented on Monday, August 18, 2016 at IFLA’s World Library and Information Congress (IFLA 2016) taking place in Cleveland, Ohio.

Title

Online News and Privacy: Are Online News Archives Affected by a “Right to be Forgotten”?

Author

Armin Talke
Berlin State Library, Berlin, Germany

Abstract

Is there a right to be deleted out of the online records ? Today’ s news are yesterday´s news tomorrow and therefore “old”. But news which are not news anymore might, in legal aspects, be treated differently than real new news. Not only after the release of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) judgement on Google Spain, the “right to be forgotten” or the right to be “de-listed” is an issue for online archives.

The judgement expands the existing privacy responsibilities for personal information on search engines. In the mentioned ruling, the court found, that “the operator of a search engine is obliged to remove from the list of results displayed following a search made on the basis of a person’s name links to web pages, published by third parties and containing information relating to that
person, …even, as the case may be, when its publication in itself on those pages is lawful.” Anyway, this applies not in every case, but, respective to the ruling, only after pondering the right to access to information and the right to privacy. But this does not make it easier. (How) can this right to be de-listed affect online-news-archives managed by libraries ? In different
countries of the EU, judgements on online newspaper archives, already years before the CJEU decision, had shaped principles for balancing privacy of individuals and free speech/freedom of the press in online archives. This talk will discuss if or how the Google judgement on the right to be forgotten” or national court decisions can affect the making available of online news by libraries, especially when they are old “news”.

Direct to Full Text Paper (7 pages; PDF)

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• “What Happens if You Publish the National Bibliography Under a CC0 License? – Experiences of the German National Library (DNB)”

• “Creating Space: The Impacts of Spatial Arrangements in Public Library Makerspaces”

• “Make New Friends, But Keep The Old: Introducing Digital Innovation Services at the Toronto Public Library”

• “Looking for the Impact of Open Access on Interlibrary Loan”

• “Strategic Technology Strengthens the Capacity Of Libraries To Serve Their Communities”