Why the BBC is wrong to republish ‘right to be forgotten’ links

The BBC's action betrays a wider ambivalence to the right to be forgotten. But they would do well to recognise the dangers of the internet's perpetual present

The BBC really doesn't like the right to be forgotten. Director of editorial policy, David Jordan, has termed it "unsearching - an ugly word for an ugly process". Big data advisor, James Leaton Gray, says it makes him nervous. And now Neil McIntosh, managing editor of BBC Online, has republished a list of 182 BBC links that have been partially obscured by Google over the past year, after Europe's highest court commanded Google to start respecting European data protection law.

Crucially, the BBC links are not removed from Google or the web, as McIntosh's post misleadingly implied. Instead, as Google corrected, they are only delisted in a very selective way - from top search results on particular individuals' names, where those individuals have made a solid case for obscurity.