The French are fining Google for not complying

Nov 14, 2014 09:57 GMT  ·  By

Google is getting pressured to remove links following the Right to Be Forgotten ruling not just at a European level, but globally.

The company’s French arm faces €1,000 in daily fines until the links are removed on the global network, but Google doesn’t seem too eager to comply since it would set a precedent.

The Guardian reports that the judgment from the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance, which is based on the controversial Right to Be Forgotten decision handed out by the European Court of Justice earlier this year, puts a new twist on the situation by making the subsidiary liable for the activities of the parent company.

Even though the decision was handed out a while back, Google has yet to comply. In fact, it’s been pretty much ignoring it and letting the fines pile up. The company has restricted its removal process to the European sites, but left the links available on Google.com and other domains outside the European Union, where the European Court of Justice decision doesn’t expand to.

In the current form, it is legally permissible to remove content under the Right to Be Forgotten in the European Union member states, but it is beyond the court’s legal authority and jurisdiction to impose the law outside the EU borders.

This has been a topic of massive annoyance for some individuals who believe that Google should remove the content throughout its sites or, at the very least, restrict people’s access to domains outside their country. This is unacceptable to Google since it would seriously restrict people’s freedom on the Internet.

The company usually suggests people use the localized version, but it won’t force them to stay put if they want to use the .com version, for instance.

An international law firm is at the root of the problems

Dan Shefet, the Danish lawyer who works in France and who brought the case against Google to France said that the court exploited one aspect of the judgment handed out by the European Court of Justice stating that “activities of the operator of the search engine and those of its establishment situated in the member state concerned are inextricably linked.”

He added that any member of the European Union who suffers from Google’s link removal delays may obtain an injunction against the local Google subsidiary.

“Until now a subsidiary could not be legally forced under the threat of daily penalties to deliver a result which was beyond its control. The complainant would therefore have to obtain judgment against Google in the US because only Google Inc controls the search engine world wide. Now a daily penalty can be inflicted upon Google UK by local courts until Google Inc delivers the result by way of [removing links] world wide,” Shefet said.

Shefet sued Google last year because the firm he works for had been the subject of a “defamation campaign” organized through blogs and sites belonging to an individual that could not be traced. Google only removed the links to the .fr domain, but not beyond it, which is a problem because the law firm is international.

Right to Be Forgotten (5 Images)

Google was ordered to remove links globally
Erasing the past, a new job for GoogleThere's a clash between the Right to Be Forgotten and the right to know
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