Google.com Domain Should Be Covered By Search De-Listing, Say European Regulators. Google has kicked against it. Eric Schmidt was doing so in public only last month. But European regulators are now stipulating the so called ‘right to be forgotten‘ ruling should apply to search results displayed on Google.com, not just on European sub-domains such as Google.co.uk. The reason the regulators want this expansion is to avoid an easy circumventing of the law, based on Google’s current implementation, which allows users to bypass the ruling by searching for private individuals’ names on Google.com.
It’s then trivial to compare results on a sub-domain with results on Google.com for discrepancies. The ‘right to be forgotten’ is actually a right for private individuals in Europe to request that inaccurate, outdated or irrelevant information be de-listed from any search engine’s results for a specific search for their name. The ruling does not extend to public figures — so it requires search engines to weigh up any public interest component attached to a de-listing request. Internet & Jurisdiction Project – A global multi-stakeholder dialogue process.
I&J Project Director Bertrand de La Chapelle was invited to share the insights generated by the I&J Project’s global multi-stakeholder dialogue process and the emerging transnational due process draft framework with the Advisory Council that Google set up to guide the implementation of the Court of Justice of the European Union ruling on the right to be de-indexed.
The hearing took place on September 25, 2014 in Paris, France. The contribution of Bertrand de La Chapelle starts at 3 hours and 31 minutes. The intervention focused on procedural aspects and mechanisms to ensure due process and proportionality of the implementation of the right to be de-indexed: The request form and evaluation criteriaThe relation with publishersThe decision-making and mechanisms for appeal The geographic scope of the de-indexingDavid C. Toward the enforceability of the “right to be forgotten” in Europe. The European Court of Justice, in a decision rendered on May 13, 2014, held that search engines are considered data controllers under the Directive of October 24, 1995 on data protection, and as such they must provide data subjects with a “right to be forgotten.” In that ruling, the European Court outlined that an individual is entitled to request search engines to have links and URLs removed from the lists of results displayed following a search on the basis of a person’s name.
This means that to enforce the right to be forgotten, an individual does not have to request the deletion of content by a website editor, but can make the request of the search engines instead, thereby making the content more difficult to locate on the Internet. Further to that decision and in order to be compliant, search engines have published specific forms to be filled out by claimants who want to request the deletion of their information from search results.
Google : comment mettre en œuvre le droit à l’oubli ? Par Isabelle Dupré, Direction Juridique, France Télévisions Le « droit à l’oubli » consacré par l’arrêt Google Spain de la Cour de Justice de l’Union Européenne (CJUE) du 13 mai 2014, met Google face à des incertitudes d'interprétation d'un droit en construction. Pour établir des critères en mesure d'évaluer la recevabilité d'une demande de déférencement, Google doit trouver le juste équilibre entre droit des personnes à l’oubli et droit à l’information du public, afin de concilier liberté d’expression et droit à la vie privée. Le 13 mai 2014, la CJUE créait l’évènement en reconnaissant, dans un arrêt Google Spain, que les moteurs de recherche étaient responsables du traitement des données personnelles. La CJUE consacrait le droit pour les personnes physiques à faire supprimer des résultats de recherche de Google les liens vers des pages mentionnant des données personnelles les concernant.
L’expression « droit à l’oubli » est néanmoins communément reprise notamment par les médias. EU judges to hear Google 'right to be forgotten' case.