The all-too-predictable consequences for the creative arts – including literature – of the European Union’s apparently misguided attempt to legislate a “right to be forgotten” appear to have started to roll. Croatian pianist Dejan Lazic has submitted a request to The Washington Post dated October 30th, asking the paper to remove a negative review of a performance he gave in 2010, on the grounds that it has featured too prominently in his Google search records for years.
The fact that the original EU legislation applied to search engine providers rather than media outlets doesn’t appear to have troubled Lazic unduly. Nor does the fact that it concerns a publication outside the EU. And the irony that his move appears to have secured more publicity for the bad review than the review itself ever received appears lost on Lazic too.
As quoted by The Post at least, Lazic explained in a follow-up e-mail that: “To wish for such an article to be removed from the internet has absolutely nothing to do with censorship or with closing down our access to information.” Bear in mind, meanwhile, that the right to be forgotten is absolutely distinct from the right to privacy, since one concerns information that was already publicly known, and the other does not. However, that’s a distinction that appears to have become blurred in the EU, to the delight of confidence tricksters and corrupt politicians everywhere – oh, and bad writers.
Special snowflakes like Margo Howard could no doubt be taking note of this precedent, while review-stalkers like Kathleen Hale must surely be glad of all the dollars and shoe leather that it could save them in tracking down their critics. George Orwell’s 1984 pinpointed this rewriting of history through the protagonist, Winston Smith, whose job is to rewrite, adjust, or erase all historical records to coincide with the latest shift in ideological and strategic priorities, because “if you control the past, you control the present.” The EU’s legislators appear to have landed us in precisely that situation. Rejoice, writing dunces, thanks to the EU your futures are secured and all your reviews will be positive.
