Re: Going back in time to modify history
It is not about re-writing history, the original articles aren't being taken down. The book isn't being rounded up and burnt.
What is being asked for is, in line with law, not to show the results when searching for TN1. If Google follow the right to be forgotten as intended, searching for Alpha or fraud would still dig up those articles, but anybody searching purely on TN1 wouldn't get the information.
It is a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless. In the "good old days," the newspaper articles would have been used as fish and chips wrapping and most people would have forgotten about it, by the time he was released. He could, as the Rehabilitation Act says, be rehabilitated and this information should not prejudice him in the future, because he has paid his debt to society. If you were really interested, you could go to the library and look for the book or go through their newspaper archives, but you would need to put in a reasonable amount of effort to "circumvent" his right at rehabilitation. That isn't something most people would do, unless they had good reason to.
The Internet makes this "natural forgetfulness of the masses" a non-thing. The Internet doesn't forget, even when, by law, it should. That is why these safeguards have been put in place.
If you really want to do the research, there is nothing to stop you, but Google isn't allowed to help you circumvent the law. You have to do the legwork yourself, as was intended.
If the right to be forgotten meant that all news archives had to be burnt and books burnt or the original stories on the news websites deleted, I would be against it. But in this case, nobody is re-writing history, the history is still there, if you go looking for it, you just can't take the (illegal) shortcut of searching on TN1's name to find it.