Google Told To Expand Right To Be Forgotten

mpicpp writes with this news from the BBC: Google is under fresh pressure to expand the 'right to be forgotten' to its international .com search tool. A panel of EU data protection watchdogs said the move was necessary to prevent the law from being circumvented. Google currently de-lists results that appear in the European versions of its search engines, but not the international one. The panel said it would advise member states' data protection agencies of its view in new guidelines. However, a link is provided at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen offering an option to switch to the international .com version. This link does not appear if the users attempted to go to a regional version in the first place. Even so, it means it is possible for people in Europe to easily opt out of the censored lists.

Comments

Re:This is clearly futile...

[IIH]

If we are going to have some kind of right to be forgotten then it should be judged by independent specialists, pages that should be 'forgotten' should be added to a public blacklist used by ISPs so that it can be checked for abuses

You misunderstand, it's not the page that should be forgotten, but the association created by google between that page and a particular person. Basically, you are effectively asking google "What is the most relevant thing about person X?", and google are returning irrelevant/out of date information. The result due to that association is within Google's control, and that association is what the court is addressing, not the existence of the page itself.

Orwell

[Animats]

"He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future." - Orwell, 1984