14 DAY TRIAL // Google and all other search engines in the world have received a hit from the European Court of Justice today. The judges have decided that search engines can be ordered to remove links to news items made publicly available.
Basically, the Internet giants have been told that they have to allow people to erase their traces from the Internet, something that could be beneficial for individual people, but damaging to the overall idea of what the Internet is supposed to be.
Google had appealed an order given by the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) saying that the companies had to remove links to two pages published in La Vanguardia in 1998. A Spanish man, Mario Costeja Gonzales, complained with the national data protection agency that Google was violating his privacy by providing in its results page when searching for his name a link to an auction notice of his repossessed home.
The case went on for a few years and has become quite notorious and sparked a debate about whether such content should be removed from search engines after a number of years has passed or if that means basically re-writing history and should not be allowed.
Gonzales believes the notes published in the newspaper back in 1998 should no longer be linked to him since the issue has long since been resolved.
Google sees the entire request as an act of censorship. The company has argued that its search results pages contain links to information published by third parties. As long as that information is accurate, Google doesn’t believe the links should be removed.
The court from Luxembourg doesn’t see things in this manner. “The operator is, in certain circumstances, obliged to remove links to web pages that are published by third parties and contain information relating to a person from the list of results displayed following a search made on the basis of that person’s name. The Court makes it clear that such an obligation may also exist in a case where that name or in formation is not erased beforehand or simultaneously from those web pages, and even, as the case may be, when its publication in itself on those pages is lawful,” reads the Court’s decision.
This being the case, individual data may have to be removed from the search pages if it is appears to be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which it was processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed.
Unless the data plays a big role in the public life, or the public takes particular interest in having access to such information, the links must be removed.
Google is understandably quite disappointed in the decision and claims that it needs time to analyze the implication of the ruling. Implementing such a measure would translate into quite a bit of alterations to the search algorithm.