Early next year, the European Union's highest court is expected to rule on one of the internet's most controversial topics: the right to be forgotten. The judges should curb their ambition, lest they open a global can of worms.The right, enshrined in privacy law, allows Europeans to demand that information about them be removed from online search results if it's outdated, irrelevant, or "excessive." The case in question involves a dispute between Google and French regulators, who in 2015 ordered the company to respect this right on all its sites-not just google.fr.Google naturally objects. So does much of the tech industry, a wide swath of civil society, and the EU itself. Rightly so: Extending the right to be forgotten globally threatens free speech, burdens private companies, intrudes on sovereignty, and is fraught with risks.Censoring lawful and factual information is dubious on principle and flawed as a way to protect privacy. It's also a substantial imposition: Since 2014, Google has had to adjudicate more than 727,000 delisting requests, spanning some 2.8 million web addresses. Each must be evaluated by humans.
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