The search giant won its battle against stringent “right to be forgotten” guidelines after the top court of Europe stated it does not have to get rid of the links to sensitive individual information across the world, declining a French request. The case is perceived as a trial of whether Europe can expand its laws further than its boundaries and whether people can request the elimination of private information from internet search results shorn of stifling genuine public interest and free speech.
The European Court of Justice said, “At present, there’s no compulsion within EU rules, for a search engine operator who bequests a demand made by a data subject for de-referencing… to perform such a de-referencing on all the variants of its search engine. Nevertheless, EU rules need a search engine operator to perform such a de-referencing on the variants of its search engine equivalent to all the (EU) member states.”
The trial surfaced after Google was penalized for 100,000 Euros ($109,790) in 2016 by the CNIL, the privacy watchdog of France, for declining to remove sensitive data from Internet search results across the world upon appeal in what is known as the “right to be forgotten.” The search giant took its battle to the French Council of State that consequently sought guidance from the CJEU. The French Council also requested for guidance after CNIL settled on not to command Google to eliminate links from search results of Internet anchored in the names of 4 persons.
Likewise, Google won’t be paying the France’s press publishers to show their content and will rather amend the manner articles shows up in search results, as said recently by a senior executive. The statement pours cold water on hopes of the publishers of receiving more money from the firm for showing up their content under the new copyright regime of EU, which France was the foremost to alter into national law.
