Legislation is not considered because politicians fail to grasp the need for legal structures until the law makes an ass of itself. Online legislation requires too much technical history to predict trends and since this blog deals with trends, the can of worms opened by google returning search results including a spent bankruptcy conviction acting against an applicant when applying for new mortgage funding does highlight a human rights challenge faced by the internet.

If practical considerations are the de facto protection for this kind of dead information, then are we faced with a new need to categorise data that requires expiry when written and while a person is living (and for a safe period of time afterward), i.e. certain government documents, tax records, criminal records as opposed to those comprising potential academic value, but only during the life it can affect, or perhaps the lives of immediate progeny. There is a need for balanced legislation rather than a court ruling that protects privacy sensibly while making no blanket assumptions about how we will evolve with the web, as an extension of our human minds. You can not make laws for the ocean.

But the right to privacy requires billions invested by google and this ruling may be the start of a new way to look at data. Ultimately, it belongs to it’s subject.