Negative Case

Resolved: The right to be forgotten from Internet searches ought to be a civil right.
I negate.

Definitions
I would like to draw attention to the words civil right.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines a civil right is an enforceable right

or privilege that secures the status of free and equal citizenship in a liberal
democratic state

Aside from this definition, I agree with my opponents definitions.

Just in case:

Right to be forgotten: The current EU ruling described the right to be

forgotten as the right for individuals to request that data harmful to their
reputation and dignity be taken down by third parties.

Framework
All of my following definitions come from the Oxford Dictionary, unless otherwise
stated.

My value is Societal Stability

Stability is defined as the state of being firmly established and unlikely to change or
fail.
Societal is of or relating to social relations or a community of people living together.
Societal constructs is the infrastructure of all aspects of society including
traditions, customs, economics, and government, which includes civil rights as a
component.
(Chandan

Sengupta

Non Executive & Independent Director, Member of Audit Committee, Member of Investor Grievance Committee and Member of IPO

Committee at Bharat Oman Refineries Limited. Mr. Sengupta holds a Bachelor's degree in Commerce from the University of Calcutta. 11-27-20

04

. Political and Social

Stability: Ideas, Paradoxes and Prospects. Economic & Political Weekly)

Social stability is the

condition of freedom from social disorder
[and] the condition of sustainable development and wellbeing.
Stability in multi-party regimes is not merely matter of political order alone, it also has a number of social determinants.

about

generally manifested in the form of inter-group conflict or violence. It is

also

In India, with the UPA government ushering in yet another era of coalition politics following the five-year rule of the NDA, the issue of stability is now being more widely debated. This article

asks whether an alliance regime with diverse ideological forces and power claimants can creditably achieve the goal of overall stability. Much will depend on how best the partners in the coalition government are

[Social stability]
ensures social
development, freedom and harmony. Stability is a basic quality
as well as a goal of every state and society.
able to remain cohesive and look at the question of stability

from a perspective that

The discourse on stability is not new. Sociologists addressed the

problem from the point of view of order and cohesion many decades ago. The issue is still alive in the academic quarters of other social science disciplines particularly among the political scientists and philosophers.
But until recently the issue of stability has not acquired a prominent place in the public discourse. Recently there has been an increasing interest in the subject among politicians, media and administrators in large
democracies like India and elsewhere. The interest seems to have developed mainly in response to the emerging political reality of multi-party regimes along with the various challenges and prospects facing these
countries. But stability is not just a matter of political order alone. It has also a number of social determinants. Keeping all this in view, the attempt here is to discuss the concerns, ideas and problems of stability from
a larger social perspective. Concerns over the stability of a coalition regime in a multi-party democracy are many, the foremost of course being the question: will the government last? Such worries apply to Indias
new alliance government as well, given the history of political factionalism in the country, the pulls and pressures from partners with different ideological and social bases and the complexity of options. Here stability
apparently refers to political stability of a government in terms of its completion of at least the full term. The electorates generally express their concerns about political stability for various reasons. While a fractured
verdict may be common in a multi-party election contest, people generally do not want a hung parliament. The costs involved in both conducting and contesting elections frequently are enormous. A brief incumbency
may also affect the continuity of various policies.

A stable society lays the foundation for any well-functioning, democratic society, as
it prevents mass chaos within the infrastructure. Before one even begins to consider,
much less discuss, other rights, freedoms, or even my opponents value of [insert
value here], a stable society must be established. Thus, societal stability precedes all
other values.

My standard is Efficiency, which is defined as being capable of achieving maximum

productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.

Societal stability is achieved and maintained with a certain level of efficiency at

which the people produce, the government borrows, and most importantly to this
case, the way the law is enforced. Without efficiency, society crumbles and any
stability present is deconstructed.

C1: The right to be forgotten

obstructs efficiency.
The right to be forgotten is too broad and ineffective to be properly regulated and
enforced.

(Peter

Coy

an economics editor of Bloomberg Businessweek. He holds a B.A. in history from Cornell University and is an alumni of Johns Hopkins University. He joined

BusinessWeek in 1989 as telecommunications editor, later becoming technology editor in 1992, associate economics editor in 1997, and economics editor in 2001. 5-15-20

14.

Europes Right to Be Forgotten Ruling is Unforgettably Confusing. Bloomberg Businessweek. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-15/europes-right-to-beforgotten-ruling-is-unforgettably-confusing.html)

Sometimes a murky court ruling becomes clearer with the passage of time. But the more people think about the European Court of Justices right to be forgotten ruling against

Europes high court ruled that the

operator of a search engine is obliged upon request to remove
links from a persons name to third-party information if that
information is inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant,
Google (GOOG) on May 12, the more confused they get.

or

excessive in relation to the purposes of the processing at issue. (Heres a link to the opinion in all its glory. And heres a slightly more understandable press release.) Bloomberg
News reporter Aoife White quoted James Waterworth, the head of the Brussels office of the Computer & Communications Industry Association: Granting citizens a so-called right
to be forgotten could open the floodgates for tens of thousands of requests to have legal, publicly available information about Europeans taken out of a search index or links
removed from websites. In Europe, coverage of the ruling has ranged from mostly respectful to supportive. Charles Arthur writes in the Guardian: If you think the judges have
taken leave of their senses, or that this means Google is going to wipe its index, dont panic. Neither is the case. Americans have had a harder time getting their minds around it.
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, rhetorically asked Matt Ford of the Atlantic, Is Google required to start censoring large swaths of the Web? Are they required to build a
complex censorship engine to block true information that a court has ruled must not be linked to? Its crazy. Set aside the high-minded discussions about whether the right to

The problem
is that it [is] entirely
unworkable.
How will
other search engines
determine whats relevant? Someone applying for a job
might feel that a link to a past nightclub altercation isnt
relevant
[But] the prospective employer might feel its
very relevant
privacy should trump the right to know, or vice versa.

real

Try answering these three questions: 1.

with the decision

seems

Google and

and should be deleted.

(especially if the employer is another nightclub). In Germany, a former SS commando named Henrich Boere who was a Nazi hit man during

World War II tried to invoke the right to be forgotten in bringing charges against reporters who secretly videotaped his confession. A judge acquitted the reporters. But the question

. What does it mean for personal information

to be inadequate?
No single link can be expected to portray a person in all of his
or her complexity. If thats what adequacy means, its an
impossibly high standard that could lead to wholesale
destruction of the system of links that make up the Internet.
remains: Whose standard of relevancy applies? 2

If a news story mentions a drunk-driving arrest but fails to note that the driver was Phi Beta Kappa, is that inadequate?

The

decision allows individuals to complain to search engines about information they do not like with no legal oversight, Index on Censorship, an advocacy group, said in a

. If passage of time is important,

as indicated by the no longer relevant standard, then how
much time must pass?
Statutes of limitations have grown out of common law,
developing over centuries in tandem with changing societal
norms.
Internet links
[have] no history or principles to go by.
statement. This is akin to marching into a library and forcing it to pulp books. 3

Is it two months for a mildly embarrassing gaffe at a holiday party but five years for a bankruptcy filing?

The European Court of Justice is essentially ordering Google and others to create a parallel statute of limitations for

with

The affirmative proposes that this right to be forgotten ought to be a civil right,
but how can this even be possible if this so called right cannot be adequately
defined or measured? Civil rights are enforceable rights or privileges that require
proactive measures from the government. Thus, the right to be forgotten cannot
be, in any way, a civil right. Furthermore, the Right to be Forgotten is far too open
to vastly different interpretations, and so is incredibly inefficient. Because of this, it
brings about chaos, and in turn, brings about harm to the stability of society.

C2: The right to be forgotten

obstructs economy
Even if it were possible for the right to be forgotten to be enforced as a civil right, it
still has a large number of detrimental impacts on society, one of which is its
obstruction of economy.

Grove

12

(Mary
. Director of Global Entrepreneur Outreach for lead Google. 20
. The Truth of the Digitial Economy. Think
with Google. http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/the-truth-of-the-digital-economy.html)

entrepreneurs around the world are leveraging technology and

the internet to connect, create, and transform their
communities and the world. Every day, people improve the efficiency of their businesses, find likeMore than ever,

minded neighbors to improve their towns, and distribute their bands latest single online.

there are many ingredients that go

into creating the right incentive structures for entrepreneurs to thrive. Among them are
access to capital, a talent pool, and a network of mentors who have succeeded and failed, not to mention [is] the
commitment of legislators and leaders to promote a free and open web.
In the US, where the JOBS Act makes provisions for crowdfunding, weve seen sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter use
the web as a democratizing platform to surface good ideas and
enable entrepreneurs to finance them, leading to more
opportunity and job creation.
If necessity is the mother of invention, incentive is the father and

The internet has created more than 3.6 million net jobs in the
US alone, while driving more of the economy than agriculture and construction combined. Arecent McKinsey
report[ed] revealed that in developed countries, the internet has contributed an average
of 21 percent GDP growth between 2004 and 2009. On average, the internet
contributes [and] 3.4 percent to GDP in the G8 nations, plus Brazil, China, India,
South Korea, and Sweden an amount the size of Spain or Canada in terms of GDP, and growing at a faster rate than that of Brazil.
In fast-growing and aspiring countries that are poised to contribute, like Morocco, Turkey, and Vietnam, the internet contributes an

A free and open

web leads to more economic development and opportunity
across the globe.
average of 1.9 percent of GDP already some $366 billion in 2010. The implication is clear:

The right to be forgotten suffocates said free and open web, and so, suffocates the
economic growth of the nation that implements this right to be forgotten and the
rest of the world. This further proves the inefficiency and detriment brought to the
social stability by the right.

Therefore, and in conclusion, it is not possible to enforce the right to be forgotten as

a civil right, because it is inefficient and inherently harms societal stability. Also,
even if it were capable of being enforced and regulated, it wreaks havoc and causes
great economic detriments, thus causing harm to the stability of society. As the right
harms my value of societal stability, it, morally speaking, out not to be implemented
in society, much less a civil right. Thus, for these reasons and more, I urge a
negative ballot in todays debate, and am now open for cross examination.