>If someone smears your name on billboards you're allowed to sue Sure, but you're not going to get anywhere with your suit unless it's defamation. "Smearing" y

>If someone smears your name on billboards you're allowed to sue Sure, but you're not going to get anywhere with your suit unless it's defamation. "Smearing" your name with something you actually did is (and or should be) protected speech. The article does not describe the confidential plaintiff winning a defamation lawsuit and forcing the material to be taken down from its source. And there would need to be no new "right to be forgotten" for that, that's just bog standard century old defamation law. All search engines and regular sites for that matter, anything that hosts 3rd party generated content, has (and is required to have by law) contacts and processes in place for taking down actual illegal material. The entire debate around this new thing is getting stuff you merely don't like but is entirely true hidden away. >Yesterday I read a story of a comedian who was getting YouTube videos about his plagiarism taken down Which sounds like horrible to me and exactly the problem! If he plagiarized, why should he be able to get those videos taken down?