The Right to Be Forgotten and the Value of an Open Future

This article seeks to shed light on debates about the right to be forgotten by offering a new account of the right as grounded in the confidence that the direction of one’s life is up to one and worth the trouble that it takes to direct it. I show how this confidence is supported by what the right actually provides: the possibility of new social interactions unconditioned by information about one’s past. This view avoids pitfalls facing other accounts of the right’s moral basis, clarifies its relation to rights of privacy, and resolves several puzzles thought to face its practical application.