EU Court Sets Limit On 'Right To Be Forgotten' In Company Registers (reuters.com)

The European Union's top court ruled in May 2014 that people could ask search engines, such as Google or Microsoft's Bing, to remove inadequate or irrelevant information from the web results produced from searches for people's names. Today, the court is limiting the so-called "right to be forgotten" principle, ruling that individuals cannot demand that personal data be erased from company records in an official register. Reuters reports: In Thursday's ruling the European Court of Justice said that company registers needed to be public to ensure legal certainty and to protect the interests of third parties. Company registers only contained a limited amount of personal information and, as executives in companies should disclose their identity and functions, it said. This did not constitute too severe an interference in their private lives and personal data. However, the court said there might be specific situations in which access to personal data in company registers could be limited, such as a long period after a company's dissolution. But this should be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Comments

Lack Of Sense

[JimSadler]

It is hard to believe that no one has mentioned that once something is on the net it is next to impossible to get rid of it. How many people copied various things and repost their information from time to time. You might have sent one email but it can be in thousands of hard drives around the world. Companies that go broke normally sell all the information that they hold.

Re:Lack Of Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is more about censoring (or whatever preferred euphemism Europeans are using to justify this) search results rather than individual hits. It would not be that sites cannot publish the things in question (yet), but rather that sites like Google, Bing, or Yahoo would have to remove all hits for a certain name if requested. In other words, the thing is still there, you just can't find it through conventional means.

Finally a bit of sanity.

[SvnLyrBrto]

If something is false, libelous, or otherwise defamatory; it should be sued (if necessary) and removed at the source (after which it will fall out of the index the next time the originating site is spidered), not by attacking Google, or any othersearch providers.

Re: What the heck are company registers?

[Anonymous Coward]

A company register is a list of organizations/businesses in the location/area/country they operate within.

In the U.K. all companies are required to appoint one, or more, director(s). The minimum number is dependent upon the company type a(there are four types of companies within the U.K.

Limited information is available to the public regarding a company - directors, named company secretary, Place of business, legal financial judgements from U.K. Courts, etc.

An example would be the BBC:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/01420028

16 Dec 2016: Registered office address changed from Television Centre 101 Wood Lane London W12 7FA to 1 Television Centre 101 Wood Lane London W12 7FA on 16 December 2016.

28 Jun 2016: Annual return made up to 28 June 2016 with full list of shareholders
Statement of capital on 2016-06-28
GBP 250,000

Fair principle bad practice

[Martin S.]

Where the information is plain wrong it is reasonable to expect it to be removed. However in many cases the complainants demanding to be forgotten are simply crooks and criminals trying to cover up past transgressions.

A list of BBC stories currently blacklisted by Google.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/int...