EU guidelines expect the right-to-be forgotten to go global
In their effort to guarantee rights to privacy are respected by internet search engines EU data regulators announced today that ‘googles’ of this world will be expected to remove privacy violating links not only from domains based inside the EU, like .eu, but also globally, which importantly is to include .com domain.
The announcement is part of a larger set of 13 non-binding guidelines for the search engines to follow on how to properly apply the decision taken by the European Court of Justice over the summer that concluded it was reasonable to ask Google to amend searches based on a person’s name if the data is irrelevant, out of date, inaccurate, or an invasion of privacy.
The rules are designed to create a uniform application of the Court’s judgment and were adopted by the article 29 working party, composed of national data protection authorities.
Earlier Google officials expressed their opposition to such de-listing with a global reach.
EUobserver reports that Google has received some 174,226 requests to have links removed since the decision by the European Court of Justice taken over the summer that concluded it was reasonable to ask Google to amend searches based on a person’s name if the data is irrelevant, out of date, inaccurate, or an invasion of privacy. Most of the requests are from France (34,632), followed by Germany (29,528), and the UK (22,467). The requests total 602,479 urls. Of those, some 41.5 percent have been de-listed or the equivalent of 208,520 links.
Follow this link to the full article on EUobserver.