European Court Grants 'Right to be Forgotten'

A ruling this week from the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) places requirements on search engines with offices in the EU to consider requests from individuals for the removal of links to certain information about them.

The case, in which Spaniard Mario Costeja González complained about the continuing availability online of articles published in 1998 by a newspaper and relating to debt recovery proceedings against him, pits the principle of a right to privacy against that of freedom of information.

González argued that both the newspaper and Google should remove the information, as it was no longer relevant to his situation today, but came up high on the list of searches on his name. The ECJ ruled that the paper could keep the pages up but Google must remove the links to them - data protection law gives certain exemptions for media / journalism, but Google has explicitly opted out of 'media' company status in previous dealings and is defined as a 'data controller' under the relevant law.

With administrative headaches no doubt in its mind as well as principle, Google said it should not be responsible for censoring information freely available on the Internet, as well as arguing it is not subject to EU jurisdiction. The Court decided however that 'by searching automatically, constantly and systematically' for online information, the search giant 'collects' and 'stores' it, and cited its office in Spain as sufficient grounds for jurisdiction - this appears to excuse smaller search engines with no offices outside the US from the ruling.

The decision means individuals can request search engines to remove links to information which they deem 'inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive...', and the companies concerned 'must then duly examine its merits'.

The principle of 'forgetting' data about one's past can be found in several other areas of European law, including the UK's Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, which declares some criminal convictions 'spent' after a period of time - France's droit d'oubli is similar, while European and US courts exclude the names of 'minors' from their proceedings on the grounds that actions in childhood have a limited relevance to adult life.

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, in a Facebook posting, said the ruling is 'a clear victory for the protection of personal data of Europeans', adding: 'Companies can no longer hide behind their servers being based in California or anywhere else in the world.'

There are a number of limitations on this 'right to be forgotten', carefully spelt out in the ruling - which is summed up in a press release at http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-05/cp140070en.pdf . One is that the information / pages in question can still turn up in searches on other terms - it's only searches made on the basis of the person's name that apply. Another: whereas the individuals right overrides both the economic interest of the search company and the more general interest of the public in finding the information after a name search, it does *not* override more specific considerations of public interest, 'such as the role played by the data subject in public life'.

Wikipedia, despite worried statements by its founder Jimmy Wales today, is thought unlikely to be affected by the ruling, as it's not a profit-making enterprise and the subjects of its articles almost by definition have some sort of public profile.

Which leads onto something of an irony, as the Guardian newspaper (to whom we are indebted for an excellent summary) points out. The case itself has made Mario Costeja González 'newsworthy and noteworthy' - a 'public figure' of sorts - and it could be argued that the offending links therefore no longer need to be removed from Google's index.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.