The latest news concerning the dispute in terms of the “right-to-be-forgotten”

13. December 2016

Peter Fleischer, a global privacy counsel, raised the question: „Should the balance between the right to free expression and the right to privacy be struck by each country?“

In basic terms, the right-to-be-forgotten is a right of every European citizen to demand the erasure of certain links from the internet. However, this can also be seen as cencorship and rewriting history, which is why there is a neverending debate upon this topic.

The French Data Protection Authority, CNIL, has demanded an ultimate right-to-be-forgotten, which would mean that French data could be demanded to be removed, for example from Google search, from all over the world.

The problem which might occur is that also non-democratic countries have to follow this rule in theory. One might argue that the internet can be seen as as an independent source of infromation that is now being endangered.

Google disagrees with the idea that the right-to-be-forgotten should also be applied upon the countries outside the Europe.

Google’s only confirmation is that it is acting in accordance with the local laws as well as within the standards set by the European Court. What is more, Google makes a promise to remove the respective links from all European Google versions simultaneously.

Nevertheless, it has also beeen pointed out that one still could have found a link on the non-European version of Google.

As a feedback Google has delisted links as well on Google.com, Google.co.kr and Google.com.mx.