Why Americans, like Europeans, should be able to scrub their online search results

[Commentary] Based on the uproar from American Internet and legal experts, I had assumed a privacy ruling by the European Union Court of Justice in May was an assault on free speech and our right to information.

I also assumed it would mostly be sex offenders or hucksters who would ask to have a search term delinked from something they don’t like on the web. But without forgetting, there can’t be much forgiving, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, author of “Delete: the virtue of forgetting in the digital age" (the book that inspired Europeans to rethink their online privacy policies) points out. And it’s hard to look forward, not back. And many, many people want slivers, or even whole swaths, of their past to be forgotten. [Zomorodi is the host and managing editor of New Tech City on WNYC, a public radio station in New York City]