There is more than a touch of irony about Mario Costeja Gonzalez’s victory over search giant Google in the European courts, which grants him the “right to be forgotten” in Google search results.
Having successfully fought to have links to news reports of his financial affairs removed from search results, on privacy grounds, his name is unlikely to ever be forgotten now.
This week the European Union Court of Justice found in Costeja Gonzalez’s favor when it ruled that links to irrelevant or out-of-date information about individuals should be removed, on request. He had argued that issues raised in two articles in the newspaper La Vanguardia – and indexed by Google – mentioning that his house had been repossessed due to his social security debts, were out of date and no longer relevant.
His case is timely as support is strong in Europe for a “right to be forgotten”, giving anyone the right to have their personal information removed when it is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant”. The court-ruling, which can't be appealed, appears to show that European law supports this right – and Google (as well as a lot of other big data hoarders) could soon find themselves faced with a flood of similar requests.
Apparently, the Spaniard is not worried that his name will now feature far more prominently than it previously did in Google results for many years to come – in fact he has been clear that he is happy to have his name associated with the case. As he told the Guardian newspaper: “I was fighting for the elimination of data that adversely affects people’s honour, dignity and exposes their private lives. Everything that undermines human beings, that’s not freedom of expression.”
Google of course sees things differently – having called the decision “disappointing” – and argued during proceedings that such actions could amount to censorship. The law will not only apply to Google, but to all other search engines including Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing.
The “right to be forgotten” proposals in Europe in many ways reflect the recently passed Californian “eraser” law – requiring tech companies to remove material posted by a minor, if they request it – due to take effect next year.
The landmark case may be settled but of course debate will rage on over the issues at its core for some time yet. And it is unclear at this stage how it might apply to social media companies such as Facebook or Twitter. Does this mean that anyone who doesn’t like something which has been said about them online can demand that it is struck from the record?
At the moment, this seems unlikely – the court was clear in its ruling that publishers will have various defences – including public interest – with which to resist requests for information removal.
I hope therefore that it means criminals or corrupt public officials won’t be able to simply ask for links to news articles about their crimes be deleted simply because they would rather people forgot them. My fear is that there is a grey area in all of this. Some might see it as legitimate that a restaurant ask for bad reviews to be taken down if they are “no longer relevant” following a change of chef? Or a builder ask for his terrible feedback on the local “trusted trader” websites to be consigned to oblivion? The danger is that is could open the door for rogue traders to clean their sheet.
Campaign group Index on Censorship has been forthright with its criticism of the decision – calling it: “Akin to marching into a library and forcing it to pulp books.” For me, it all depends on how this new law (which currently only applies to citizens of the European Union) is implemented in practice. It will surely make life more complicated and expensive for search engine providers.
Whichever side of the fence you’re on, this ruling could have a big impact on anyone involved with storing or publishing data, and I’d love to hear your views. Do you see this as an important step toward more control of your public data or do you see it as censorship? Please share your views...
No comments:
Post a Comment