A Deep Analysis of Dennis Baron's "A Right To Be Forgotten"

With the current explosion of electronic, technological, and Internet based advancements in recent years, information has bloomed and grown and spread to all corners of the globe. Social media and blogging and news sources have connected causes, rallied revolutions, and have allowed previously small voices to be heard, permeating the masses. In an interesting turn of events, Dennis Baron wrote an article, “The Right To Be Forgotten” which tackles an unexpected result of this increasing of public voice: when a voice chooses to silence itself. Baron’s article describes the news story of Mario Costeja González, who enacted nearly a reversal of free speech, in that he wished to have information previously released about himself deleted from Google.

This article tackles many different exigencies, delivering an array of philosophical quandaries from a purely factual article. Sci/Tech blogs employ the logical and thesis driven explanations of scientific analysis, while enabling rhetoric to add to unanswered ideologies of life, the universe, and existence.

Specifically, Baron presents the exigency of conflicting human rights, the rights to “free speech and an explicit right to privacy” (Baron). In an ever invasive internet world where deeply kept secrets along with the least private aspects of someone’s writing can be shared through the same machine, an increase in the use of free speech and a demand to one’s own privacy is critical, and very incongruous. Costeja González’s case spawned from a news snippet written about him a full eleven years before the court case, about his home being seized and foreclosed upon. Because this was the extent of any news written about him, the article was the first link to appear through a Google search. Although this information was previously public and existed through Costeja González’s actions, his lawsuit challenges whether or not his personal privacy trumps the newspapers use of free press. The need for the discourse arises in the ruling: Costeja González did the impossible and won a court case against Google. His information was eliminated from Google in Europe and replaced with a “notice of removal”. Unfortunately sparking an information recession, in some sense, Google Spain v AEPD and Mario Costeja González ignited thousands of copycat lawsuits to remove information from Google’s endless database.

Although the court case itself was an odd event and rather difficult to decipher its true exigence, Baron makes it very clear what his article is trying to accomplish. By starting the essay with a quote from a Roman poet saying, “the word, once sent, can never be recalled,” Baron is warning his readers, and this serves as the thesis statement, attempting to deliver the articles exigence as simply and coherently as possible. Although, on the surface, news of a man having his dirty laundry deleted from the Internet counters this quote, but speculating the lengths that were taken to finally reach a verdict of the court case, as well as the popularity of the story outgrowing the original exigence in the first place, Baron ironically uses a counterpoint he refutes to deliver his caution to the exigence. By building off of the technology news article, Baron delivers his message to an audience that is probably well informed on the subject of Internet freedom as well as Internet privacy, but the article serves as an analysis of their somewhat-contrasting beliefs.

Baron, Dennis. "The Right to Be Forgotten." Web log post. The Web of Language. N.p., 24 Aug. 2014. Web. 7 Sept. 2014.