Three out of four Europeans recently polled insist they should have the right to remove any online information about them that is publicly available on the Internet.

They believe individuals should have a “right to be forgotten” on the Web, should they choose to be. Spain’s government agrees and is calling widespread attention to the issue. Today, reporter Suzanne Daley wrote:

“It [Spain] has ordered Google to stop indexing information about 90 citizens who filed formal complaints with its Data Protection Agency. The case is now in court and being watched closely across Europe for how it might affect the control citizens will have over information they posted, or which was posted about them, on the Web.”

Franz Werro, a law professor she interviewed, said that “in the United States, courts have consistently found that the right to publish the truth about someone’s past supersedes any right to privacy. Europeans, he said, see things differently: “In Europe you don’t have the right to say anything about anybody, even if it is true.”

The online privacy issues that affect online reputation management are complex. Here in the U.S., we have far more obstacles to overcome before such a movement takes hold in our legal system. The Internet was created as an open system of information. We have a vastly more commercial set of entities profiting from the information they access about us online. Freedom of speech proponents would debate the issue for decades. Information is constantly spilling online because of errors, hacking, employee mistakes. The main law governing who is (not) responsible for what is posted online is way behind the times. Our legal system is still grappling with how and what to govern online information.  Virtually everything entered online is indexed, and not just by Google. It is a tangled web.

So thank you Europe, for leading the dialogue…and the way.