When to respect someone's right to be forgotten

We've all done embarrassing things, of course, but The Independent will only ever remove an article if it meets some very strict criteria

It is four years since a ruling by the European Court of Justice introduced what quickly became known as the “right to be forgotten”. The upshot of the judgment was to allow individuals to request search engines such as Google remove certain results from web searches.

When applications are made, it is ultimately for the search engines in question to make a decision about whether or not to comply. Given that requests often relate to historic news coverage, there have long been suggestions the legislation has effectively enabled people to rewrite history, expunging from search results media reports about past misdemeanours.

It’s hard not to feel a degree of sympathy for those who have done things in years gone by which were out of character or embarrassing. After all, who hasn’t done things they later regret, even if they weren’t newsworthy – or weren’t noticed?