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EU Court Backs 'Right To Be Forgotten'

Posted by Soulskill on from the bad-time-to-be-a-search-provider dept.

NapalmV sends this news from the BBC: "The European Union Court of Justice said links to 'irrelevant' and outdated data should be erased on request. The case was brought by a Spanish man who complained that an auction notice of his repossessed home on Google's search results infringed his privacy. Google said the ruling was 'disappointing.'" The EU Justice Commissioner said, "Companies can no longer hide behind their servers being based in California or anywhere else in the world. ... The data belongs to the individual, not to the company. And unless there is a good reason to retain this data, an individual should be empowered — by law — to request erasure of this data." According to the ruling (PDF), if a search provider declines to remove the data, the user can escalate the situation to a judicial authority to make sure the user's rights are being respected.

3 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot stories obviously have that right, too. by plover · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://search.slashdot.org/sto...

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    John
  2. Unworkable by icebike · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Almost Nobody has a unique name.
    I could be running for office, running a business, or selling my artwork, and have someone with the same name demand all link be removed when his name is keyed into the search engine.

    How is Google to know which individual is being searched?

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    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    1. Re:Unworkable by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your point is valid but I've got one better. The only people that will use this will do so for what I consider nefarious purposes. Criminals, politicians you name it, if it makes the public aware of exactly what they've done they will demand to be erased.

      Once the tool is created it will be available for government to use and suddenly we have the memory hole and Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

      I like the idea of being able to make someone like facebook delete all your personal information but that's not how this tool is going to be used. It's going to be used by a politician to force Google to delete links to all stories about an affair they had. It will be used to censor the news not to maintain privacy as claimed. Frankly it's a politicians wet dream.