Google & Europe’s Right to Be Forgotten
A recent round of court decisions has forced Google, the internationally known search behemoth, to shrink its search index, instead of expanding on it. This past May, a ruling by the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) required Google to provide a means by which citizens of the EU could request the search provider to delete information collected on individuals where the search result(s) “appear to be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant or excessive in the light of the time that had elapsed. “Dubbed the “Right to Be Forgotten”, the ruling resulted from a case where a Spanish citizen sued Google to remove search links to a 1998 article in the newspaper La Vanguardia, which listed an auction notice by Spanish authorities of his repossessed home. The CJEU found that search engines like Google could be compelled to remove results for queries that include a person’s name, if the results shown are inadequate, no longer relevant or excessive.
Google began removing search results in the last week of June, in compliance with the court ruling. According to PCWorld.com, “Google said it’s working as quickly as possible to get through the queue of requests, which as of [May 2014] numbered 41,000. A Google spokesman would not provide the total number of removal requests received to date.” Addressing these requests, however, a requires each individual request application be assessed to “balance the right of the individual to control his or her personal data with the public’s right to know and distribute information.”
Right to Be Forgotten exists, but only in Europe
One important aspect of this ruling is that it is limited to European citizens and is tied to Europe’s data protection directive, established in 1995. This means that the ruling and overall “Right to Be Forgotten” do not apply to US citizens who are not also European residents. Furthermore, search results may be limited in accordance with applicable European domains. For example, Google search results in France found via google.fr may have indexed results removed, whereas results in the US from google.com would still include all results.
Canada Court Orders Deletion of Search Results Worldwide
On the heels of the CJEU ruling came an order from the Supreme Court of British Columbia also requiring Google to remove specific search results. Notably, the order requires Google to not only remove search results from the Canadian domain (e.g. google.ca), but from its worldwide search indexes (e.g. google.com).
The ruling in Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack centered on an intellectual property dispute between two small industrial equipment companies. Equustek Solutions makes a device allowing industrial machines from different manufacturers to communicate with one another. That device was marketed and sold by the company Datalink. The court found Datalink had stolen the designs to the device and reverse engineered it, creating its own device which it sells through the internet. In an earlier case, the court ultimately ruled for Equustek, at which point Google Canada voluntarily removed web addresses related to Datalink from searches conducted through the Canadian domain google.ca. Every time the Canadian-based search results were removed, however, Datalink would create a new site to sell the device, using a slightly different web address each time. In the most recent ruling, the judge sought to end this game of “whack-a-mole” by ordering the worldwide deletion of the entire domain from Google search results.
Wide-Ranging Implications
Several internet advocacy commentators have weighed in on the ruling calling it a massive overreach, and an unprecedented order. Commonly cited is the question of jurisdiction. While the Canadian court determined that it did indeed have the jurisdiction to order search index deletion on a global scale, it begs the question of what happens when legitimate courts come up with contradicting orders. Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, points out that if this ruling is upheld and propagated by courts in other countries, the internet could shift from a lawless wild-west to a place where all courts have jurisdiction everywhere.
“What happens if a Russian court orders Google to remove gay and lesbian sites from its database? Or if Iran orders it remove Israeli sites from the database? The possibilities are endless since local rules of freedom of expression often differ from country to country.”
Conclusion: Yet to be determined
Google stated that it intends to appeal the Canadian decision. Regardless of the outcome, however, Google is facing a new paradigm within its search indexing model. Instead of crawling and providing information and links to all of its indexed data, it may now be in the business of monitoring, assessing and deleting greater segments of data due to expanding privacy laws and jurisdictional interpretations.
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