EU Court Of Justice Advocate General: No Right To Be Forgotten; Google Not Responsible For What It Finds

from the getting-it-right dept

For years, we've discussed the very troubling concept, supported by many in Europe, of a right to be forgotten, which would allow someone to require that internet sites scrub any evidence of truthful historical events -- such as a criminal conviction -- if those events are embarrassing. If you believe in basic free speech rights, such a concept should be horrifying to you. Last year, we noted that a report put out by a European committee noted that it was basically technically impossible to really enforce a right to be forgotten, but the concept is still being widely pushed.

In a key lawsuit in Europe that alleges there already is such a right, and that Google needs to somehow scrub links to information that someone finds embarrassing, the advocate-general of the European Court of Justice, Niilo Jaaskinen, has stated clearly that there is no such right under European data and privacy laws and that the courts cannot require Google to remove links under such a claim. Specifically, Jaaskinen looked at the data protection directive in the EU and found:
...the Directive does not establish a general ‘right to be forgotten’. Such a right cannot therefore be invoked against search engine service providers on the basis of the Directive, even when it is interpreted in accordance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

The rights to rectification, erasure and blocking of data provided in the Directive concern data whose processing does not comply with the provisions of the Directive, in particular because of the incomplete or inaccurate nature of the data. This does not seem to be the case in the current proceedings
Basically, there's a right to fix misleading or incorrect data, not data that is accurate that you just don't like.

Perhaps more importantly, the filing notes that it's also ridiculous to blame a search engine for finding content that others posted, since the search engine is not responsible for that content. In other words, basic concepts of protection from secondary liability should apply:
In effect, provision of an information location tool does not imply any control over the content included on third party web pages. It does not even enable the internet search engine provider to distinguish between personal data in the sense of the Directive, which relates to an identifiable living natural person, and other data. In his opinion, the internet search engine provider cannot in law or in fact fulfil the obligations of the controller provided in the Directive in relation to personal data on source web pages hosted on third party servers.

Therefore, a national data protection authority cannot require an internet search engine service provider to withdraw information from its index except in cases where this service provider has not complied with the exclusion codes4 or where a request emanating from a website regarding an update of cache memory has not been complied with.
Of course, this is just the advocate-general's position, and the ECJ could decide to rule otherwise, but it appears to often pay close attention to what the advocate-general submits to the court. Hopefully the court's eventual ruling agrees with this common sense approach, and doesn't create a bogus right to be forgotten and then, even worse, puts the liability on third parties for enforcing it.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: advocate general, eu, european court of justice, niilo jaaskinen, right to be forgotten, secondary liability
Companies: google


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    out_of_the_blue, 26 Jun 2013 @ 8:34pm

    Google's Schmidt calls for 'DELETE from INTERWEBS' button

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/07/digital_delete_google/

    Schmidt evidently has ideas that MIke sez are unworkable. -- I've read speculation that one purpose Schmidt had in mind, though, is that any future "secret agents" will need their history deleted and new ones created. Besides that, Orwell's "1984" predicts an "unperson" process in which people are removed from the computer system. Today, to have just your bank accounts and similar data items vanished would be quite inconvenient, right?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2013 @ 8:47pm

    Re: Google's Schmidt calls for 'DELETE from INTERWEBS' button

    Try to erase YaCy content then LoL

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2013 @ 9:10pm

    Re: Google's Schmidt calls for 'DELETE from INTERWEBS' button

    and where in your linked article did it state that it was currently feasible or even possible to do?

    I hope you have sent money to theregister.co.uk for stealing their Intellectual Property, or are you finally going to admit to being a freetard who is using others IP without paying for it.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Jun 2013 @ 1:07am

    Re: Re: Google's Schmidt calls for 'DELETE from INTERWEBS' button

    If anyone does a remake of 'the Clockwork Orange' they should have Alex viddie the tech dirt comments as torture/reprogramming rather than video nasties.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Jun 2013 @ 2:29am

    I thought it was a given that once its out on the internet, it never goes away. I can still find old geocities stuff ffs. Dunno why the EU even bothered debating this

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Jun 2013 @ 2:51am

    There! We finally deleted it all. ... Wait, someone just uploaded a back-up... and mirrored it. Now we have to delete it from all those search engines, again!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    Ninja (profile), 27 Jun 2013 @ 4:02am

    Even if by some miracle you managed to remove anything from the web there will always be SOMEONE with a copy somewhere in their HDDs. All it would take is a new upload and the cycle starts anew. I do agree that it's a matter of free speech and all but it is technically not feasible under the current structure. Now with total surveillance......

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Jun 2013 @ 4:35am

    Re: Google's Schmidt calls for 'DELETE from INTERWEBS' button

    " Besides that, Orwell's "1984" predicts"

    Errr. 1984 is a work of fiction. It just happens that many governments see it as a guide and that is why we seem to be heading that way.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. icon
    Niall (profile), 27 Jun 2013 @ 5:13am

    Re: Google's Schmidt calls for 'DELETE from INTERWEBS' button

    Just because it may be 'feasible' for an organisation with the reach and power of a 'spy organisation' to 'disappear' people doesn't mean that a non-governmental organisation would be able to do the same.

    Besides, the Internet is making a lot of 'traditional' spy activities more difficult - just look at a long list of movies whose main premise would be very difficult to carry off nowadays.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. icon
    RyanNerd (profile), 27 Jun 2013 @ 5:28am

    Playing devil's advocate

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Jun 2013 @ 6:06am

    I see why this right is needed

    I see what they were thinking when making this right to be forgotten.

    Here in America, if you get sent to jail for even the most minor thing like smoking pot, you're basically branded a criminal for life. It's extremely difficult to get almost any job, because most people won't hire those with a criminal past.

    And at the same time, you're ten times more likely to break the law and go back to jail once you've already been there.

    But really, if you broke the law to steal some money since you couldn't afford to get by before, this branding of you as a criminal for life gets you stuck in an infinite loop of having to break the law to survive because no one will hire you as a law abiding citizen.

    Also, to make things worse, the programs to help ex cons adjust and not go back to crime after they leave prison are practically always the first thing that politicians cut during a budget shortfall, because hey, you're just voting against criminals, who wants to be seen supporting criminals with some kind of a 'handout'? Never mind that cutting such programs can cost tax payers MORE long term when criminals go back to crime.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Jun 2013 @ 6:26am

    "Google Not Responsible For What It Finds"


    What? - We can't have that!
    The voice of reason will not be tolerated.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. icon
    dennis deems (profile), 27 Jun 2013 @ 6:30am

    Re: Re: Re: Google's Schmidt calls for 'DELETE from INTERWEBS' button

    For a taste of true horror, try the comment threads at Yahoo or HuffPost.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  14. icon
    dennis deems (profile), 27 Jun 2013 @ 6:38am

    Re: Google's Schmidt calls for 'DELETE from INTERWEBS' button

    Why is this comment flagged??? I can't imagine what anyone has found objectionable about it.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  15. icon
    John Fenderson (profile), 27 Jun 2013 @ 9:23am

    Re: Google's Schmidt calls for 'DELETE from INTERWEBS' button

    Schmidt evidently has ideas that MIke sez are unworkable.


    If so, he didn't say what they were. He was just issuing a general "I wish this existed" statement, not offering any explanation of how this would even be technically possible.

    That's because it's not technically possible. The internet isn't one giant database where you can just go in and delete records. It's the cooperation of millions of servers, a mix of privately and publicly owned, each solidly in control of the data they are storing.

    In that environment, how could a "delete" button actually work? Take email as an example of the problem: despite there existing a real market for self-destructing email, nobody has ever come up with a way that it can be reliably done -- and not for lack of trying -- because it can't be reliably done. Some things are simply impossible.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  16. icon
    John Fenderson (profile), 27 Jun 2013 @ 10:07am

    Re: Playing devil's advocate

    So Techdirt's avocating that criminal records from a person's youth be removed from public view is not hypocritcal of this article?


    Neither of those stories assert anything like what you're claiming they assert.

    The first one is advocating the juvenile criminal records should not be sold to third parties.

    The second one is commenting on how your data, once on the internet, is permanent and so you should be cautious about what you put on the internet.

    No hypocrisy is anywhere in sight.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  17. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Jun 2013 @ 7:17pm

    If we could get a law passed that would allow us to sue every time someone looked at old pictures of us on the net, we could make $$$$. It worked for Masha Allen.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  18. identicon
    Fawzy hillal, 9 Aug 2013 @ 2:49pm

    I'm Yemeni in Aden city in illegal prison since 3 years without trial not send to court no case only because of bequest heritage my brothers paied money to some commanders in gov besides kidnaped my sons steal my workshop all cases police done it against

    I'm seeking for European Union court to punish them and shifting me as asylum refugee along with my sons to Europe country where I can live in save my age 41 years engineer welder Yemeni I request you to help me as you can to reach my letter against Yemeni justice law to the to the Europe union to save me it's difficult contact for me I don't want more than to work and live save thank you so much my phone number 009627 code 711760087 or 772676530 emailme2000@ bmail

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.