Of all the human traits, none has been so greatly magnified by the internet as the capacity to be humiliated. People have always written letters when drunk, tripped over carpets and confided their secrets to gossips. It is only in recent years that they have had the experience of being followed online for an entire lifetime by a crime report or a sex tape. For more than a decade, googling the name of Mario Costeja González has brought up links to a 1998 official notice in Catalan from the big Barcelona paper La Vanguardia, announcing the auction of his home for debts. It was a big deal for Mr Costeja and this week the European Court of Justice brought him a measure of relief. It ruled that Google could be made to remove the links in the name of a “right to be forgotten”.
在所有的人類特徵中，沒有哪種特徵受到網路放大的程度，比「丟臉的能力」還大。人們總會有在喝醉酒時寫字，在地毯上絆倒，或把自己的祕密吐露給愛八卦的人的時候。只是在最近幾年裏，人們纔有了因爲一項犯罪記錄或一段性愛錄像，就一生都要受到網路跟蹤的經歷。十多年來，用谷歌(Google)搜尋馬里奧•格斯蒂亞•岡薩雷茲(Mario Costeja González)的名字，搜索結果中就會顯示一條鏈接，內容是巴塞隆納一家大型報紙《先鋒報》(La Vanguardia)於1998年刊登的加泰隆尼亞官方通知，對拍賣格斯蒂亞的房產以償還其債務一事進行了通告。這對格斯蒂亞來說是件大事，上週，歐洲法院(European Court of Justice)給予了他一些補救措施。歐洲法院裁定，按照「被遺忘權」，谷歌可能必須將鏈接刪除。
