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school, discovered her comment on her MySpace (Internet) page criticizing her
supervising teacher. The MySpace page also contained a picture of herself wear-
ing a pirate’s hat and holding a plastic cup with the words “drunk pirate” written
on it.
22
Because of this posted material, the school claimed that she had behaved
in a nonprofessional manner, one that effectively promoted the consumption of
alcohol by minors. Consequently, they barred her from concluding her training,
preventing her from earning a bachelor’s degree in education, but allowed her to
receive a degree in English literature. Her claim was that, on the basis of her right
to freedom of speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the American
Constitution, she had a right to post the picture on MySpace. The federal judge,
however, rejected her claim, arguing that she was a civil servant and thus the
ground she had raised was not in reference to an issue that was in the public in-
terest. As Jeffrey Rosen aptly remarked,
23
had this incident taken place in Europe
Stacy Snyder would have invoked her right to be forgotten and she would have
requested that Google and Yahoo remove all references to this picture. Indeed,
this is precisely where the vast difference between the two continents lies: in
America people want to be remembered, whereas in Europe, influenced by Sar-
tre’s French intellect, people wish to be forgotten.
24
After all, this different treat-
ment of the right to be forgotten between the two continents can also be seen
in the relevant literature. In the United States, Nestor A. Braunstein talks about
forgetting a crime as a crime of forgettance,
25
while Lilian Mitrou in Europe has
written a monograph entitled “the publicity of sanctioning or the sanctioning
of publicity”.
26
Whereas Nestor A. Braunstein treats oblivion as a crime, Lilian
Mitrou considers memory as being a sanction.
The right to be forgotten is treated with great suspicion in the United States.
Nonetheless, technological solutions are suggested for dealing with the problem
of great memory, such as the utilization of Facebook applications for example,
which allow users to choose whether they want a photograph on their Facebook
page, for example, to stay there permanently or for a specified period of time.
27
22. See
Snyder v. Millersville Univ.
, 2008 U.S. Dist. (E.D. Pa., Dec. 3, 2008).
23. See Jeffrey Rosen
,
!nformation Privacy: Free Speech, Privacy, and the web that never for-
gets, 9 Journal on Telecommunications & High Technology Law (2011), p. 345 et seq.
(346).
24. See Jeffrey Rosen
,
ibid., p. 346.
25. Nestor A. Braunstein
,
)blivion of Crime as Crime of Oblivion, 24 Cardozo Law Review
(2003), p. 2255 et seq.
26. See Lilian Mitrou, footnote 3.
27. See Viktor Mayer-Schonberger
,
Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, Princ-
eton University Press, Princeton 2009, p. 15.
