Archives in the Digital Age

5Preservation of Archives versus the Right to be Forgotten

5.1. Introduction

The massification of data, especially on the Internet, has increased their economic interest. Nevertheless, even if the use of this data, in particular personal data, meets colossal economic challenges, it may affect people’s fundamental rights. Several legal texts have emerged to defend these rights through the protection of personal data in France since 1978, such as the famous French Data Protection Act and European Directive 95/46/EC, prescribed by the European Parliament and Council in 1995. Moreover, over the years, with the digital technologies that have been developed to perpetuate data, such as those mentioned in Chapter 4, an increasingly imposing claim has emerged that is linked to the “right to be forgotten”, also known as the “right to digital oblivion”. This concept is still unclear, even though it is not a recent one, and it already appears to be in contradiction with the right to information put forward by all countries as an expression of their relationship with democracy, transparency and the equality of citizens. In this chapter, we will determine the limits of this concept, its content and its implications, especially in the field of archiving large data, among other issues. We will also focus on two key concepts that are digital forgetting and the right to be forgotten, while trying to discuss the technical and legal challenges.

5.2. Forgetting

Forgetting refers, in its negative ...