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As European regulators work on guidelines for the “right to be forgotten” mandate against Google and other search engines including Microsoft and Yahoo, many caution against “erasing history” and requiring private companies like Google to remove content that should otherwise be public.
In May, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a decision in the case of Google Inc. and Google Spain against the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, the Spanish data protection authority. The decision requires search engines to provide citizens the opportunity to petition to have information published about them on the internet removed. Regulators are hoping to have the guidelines for this decision solidified by autumn, but they face concerns from many including privacy advocates who praise the measure and anti-censorship groups who decry it.
VISUAL CONTEXT: GOOGLE’S SHARE OF THE SEARCH MARKET
Source: comScore
Jimmy Wales — the founder of Wikipedia — has issued his opinion on the ruling, and he warns against giving companies like Google the power to erase certain information. He told BBC Radio 4 Today:
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. That is a very dangerous path to go down, and if we want to go down a path where we are going to be censoring history, there is no way we should leave a private company like Google in charge of making those decisions.
Those against the “right to be forgotten” mandate are comforted by the fact that information that has been removed upon request is still technically available online. The information is removed from search indices in Europe, but is available through the U.S. version of the search engine as well as other countries’ versions. Still, Google CEO Larry Page has warned that this ruling could potentially encourage other world leaders who are intent on censoring the internet in tighter ways to crack down further. The E.U. certainly has its work cut out for it during this time period of establishing guidelines for international search engines and their guardianship of personal information.
