Pianist Dejan Lazic wants to take down negative reviews of his work online — and he's using the legal system to do so.
Lazic lives in Europe, and the EU ruled in May that people have a "right to be forgotten" online. So Lazic requested that The Washington Post remove a 2010 review of one of his performances. Apparently, the review has "marred the first page of his Google results for years," according to Caitlin Dewey at the Post.
Lazic told the Post that he wants to regain control of his image online, and that he's not concerned with censorship or with "closing down our access to information." The "right to be forgotten" law gives individuals control over their personal search results, allowing them to request a site take down "inadequate, irrelevant, or... excessive" links.
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However, the EU court ruled that the search engine should remove the links, not the publishers themselves. But as Dewey notes, Lazic's question could lead to artists and politicians editing their records. Luckily, the U.S. has "different priorities for truth."
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