|
Free speech advocates and supporters of privacy rights have
clashed in recent years over people's "right to be forgotten"
online, meaning that they should be able to remove their digital
traces from the internet.
The case before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)
concerned two executives from a group of investment companies
who had asked Google to remove search results linking their
names to certain articles criticising the group's investment
model.
They also wanted Google to remove thumbnail photos of them from
search results. The company rejected the requests, saying it did
not know whether the information in the articles was accurate or
not.
A German court subsequently sought advice from the CJEU on the
balance between the right to be forgotten and the right to
freedom of expression and information.
"The operator of a search engine must de-reference information
found in the referenced content where the person requesting
de-referencing proves that such information is manifestly
inaccurate," the Court of Justice of the European Union said.
To avoid an excessive burden on users, judges said such proof
does not have to come from a judicial decision against website
publishers and that users only have to provide evidence that can
reasonably be required of them to find.
Google said the links and thumbnails in question were no longer
available through web search and image search and that the
content had been offline for a long time.
"Since 2014, we've worked hard to implement the right to be
forgotten in Europe, and to strike a sensible balance between
people’s rights of access to information and privacy," a
spokesperson said.
The same court in 2014 enshrined the right to be forgotten,
saying that people could ask search engines like Google to
remove inadequate or irrelevant information from web results
appearing under searches for their names.
The judgment preceded landmark EU privacy rules that went into
effect in 2018 and state that the right to be forgotten is
excluded where the processing of personal data is necessary for
the exercise of the right of information.
The case is C-460/20 Google (Déréférencement d'un contenu
prétendument inexact).
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, additional reporting by Benoit Van
Overstraeten in Paris; editing by Barbara Lewis, Robert Birsel)
[© 2022 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
