A gripping insight into the digital debate over data ownership, permanence and policy
“This is going on your permanent record!” is a threat that has never held more weight than it does in the Internet Age, when information lasts indefinitely. The ability to make good on that threat is as democratized as posting a Tweet or making blog. Data about us is created, shared, collected, analyzed, and processed at an overwhelming scale. The damage caused can be severe, affecting relationships, employment, academic success, and any number of other opportunities—and it can also be long lasting.
One possible solution to this threat? A digital right to be forgotten, which would in turn create a legal duty to delete, hide, or anonymize information at the request of another user. The highly controversial right has been criticized as a repugnant affront to principles of expression and access, as unworkable as a technical measure, and as effective as trying to put the cat back in the bag. Ctrl+Z breaks down the debate and provides guidance for a way forward. It argues that the existing perspectives are too limited, offering easy forgetting or none at all. By looking at new theories of privacy and organizing the many potential applications of the right, law and technology scholar Meg Leta Jones offers a set of nuanced choices. To help us choose, she provides a digital information life cycle, reflects on particular legal cultures, and analyzes international interoperability. In the end, the right to be forgotten can be innovative, liberating, and globally viable.

"Ctrl + Zargues powerfully that we should all take the advice of Googles Eric Schmidt and be more careful about how we interact with one another online." - Financial Times

"[A] groundbreaking comparative work." - Harvard Law Review

"The legal and moral implications require a rethinking of much of what we take for granted, and Jones is plugged in to many of the conversations." - Inside Higher Ed

"In language accessible to non-specialists, enriched by an interdisciplinary outlook and a plethora of examples and case law, Jones draws on legal cultures, international feasibility and interoperability and detailed information about the information about the information life cycle, and argues that both approaches, favouring and opposing the right to be forgotten, take only a partial view on the matter." - Times Higher Education

"[T]he books strength is its ability to inspire, and that is what makesCtrl + Za pleasure to read. In proposing the idea of information stewardship, it may give us some guidance towards a solution to this complex and controversial policy issue." - The London School of Economics' "United States Politics and Policy" blog

"[CTRL+Z] advocates that online privacy is a pressing issue, but the United States government just keeps procrastinating on the matter. As important as the issue is, it just doesn't appear to be on many people's minds--yet." - Popmatters.com

"Meg Leta Jones, an assistant professor at Georgetown University, is one of the more interesting observers of the web and the persistence of its content." - ZDNet.com

"[B]y laying out the terrain so thoughtfully, and highlighting the concepts that should guide our actions, Jones has created the groundwork for a much needed conversation on the profound problem of permanent digital ballasts in the 21st century." - The New York Times Book Review