Can we make the Internet “forget” something about us? CJEU and ECtHR Approach

Abstract

Memories make us who we are. Online memories shape our online existence.
Who has access to our online memories? The International Telecommunication
Union of the United Nations estimates that approximately 5.4 billion
people have used the Internet1. Since the Internet has practically infinite memory,
access to a lot of data could last for a long time and influence the autonomy
of the individual in different ways2. Stedman’s Medical Dictionary defines
human forgetting as “being unable to retrieve or recall information that was once
registered, learned, and stored in short-term or long-term memory.”3 How is this
possible online? Can we make the Internet ‘forget’ something about us? Or our
online memories are part of the ‘digital eternity’?