14 DAY TRIAL // Reports indicate that a Wikipedia entry has been removed from a certain Google search results page due to the “Right to be forgotten.”
According to The Observer, this is the first time that a Wikipedia entry is targeted by a request made under the new ruling, which was pushed in Europe back in May.
As you may know, the ruling says that people can ask Google and any other search engine to remove links leading to content that is no longer relevant. For instance, if John Smith doesn’t want an article about a book he stole 10 years ago to appear on pages returning results based on his name, then he can ask companies to remove the links.
While this may reinforce his right to force content out of Google Search, it does not mean that everyone else doesn’t have the right to have access to all the information publicly available.
Furthermore, it’s not like the data is completely wiped off the Internet when the link is removed, as the articles can still be located on the source sites and can also be accessed if you search them via Google.com instead of the localized European versions of Google.
Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia and has been quite straightforward about letting the world know just how much of a bad idea the “right to be forgotten” is.
“We have this one ruling of the ECJ which is very open-ended and very hard to interpret. I would say the biggest problem we have is that the law seems to indicate Google needs to censor links to information that is clearly public - links to articles in legally published, truthful news stories,” Wales told BBC Radio 4 Today.
He also added, on other occasions, that the legislation needed to be fixed because it was completely insane. To make sure his views are taken into account, he will travel to Madrid to be part of a Google-appointed panel that will have to draw up guidance for search engines on how to handle link removal requests, since after all, not all companies have Google’s work force and powers.
Now that a Wikipedia link has been removed, things have gotten more interesting because this is an encyclopedia we’re talking about. What would have happened if the information had been printed and sold in libraries?
Google has recently revealed that it’s been having some difficulties to respond to right to be forgotten requests because of the subjective nature of some of the decisions that need to be made.