Google and the right to be forgotten

20.05.2014

The Court of Justice of the European Union has finally solved the case between  Google and Spanish Data Protection Agency, that has lasted for over a decade, ruling in its judgment of 13th of May, 2014, C-131/12, in favour of the “right to privacy”.

It all started in 1998, when the first complaint was filed by Mario Costeja. He asked Google to remove from its results lists an advertisement, where this private individual´s name was mentioned because of the attachment for non-payment to the Social Security that had already been regularised. This complaint was based on the huge disservice that  the advertisement of the attachment  caused to Mario Costeja.

After few instances, Costeja´s complaint, made through the Spanish Data Protection Agency against Google, reached the National Court, which referred it to The Court of Justice of the European Union so that this Court could decide whether there was a possible infringement of European legislation (Directive 95/46/CE on data protection) caused by Internet browser.

At this point the Court of Justice of the European Union rules that “the provider of the internet search engine is responsible for the processing of the personal data that are published on the third-party websites” and, thus, “if, as a consequence of the request of the person concerned, the inclusion of those links in the lists (of search results) is incompatible with the Directive (on data protection), the information and the links that appear on the lists must be removed”.

It is important to mention that the Court has ruled its judgement in the opposite direction to the conclusions presented by the Advocate General, Niilo Jääskinen. In his conclusions he argued that “the services of the internet search engine are not responsible for the personal data that appear on their websites”.

The majority considers that this judgement represents a huge progress in the area of the interner user´s data protection. However, the Court insists that this “right to privacy” must be treated individually by the search engine taking into account the request of the concerned party. That is to say, that once the concerned party has asked the browser to “remove the information about him”, this browser has to check “if said party concerned has the right for the information concerning him to stop being linked to his name in the search engine results lists”.  

 

Source:

http://www.lvcentinvs.es/2014/05/google-ley-de-telecomunicaciones-y-patentes.html

http://www.abc.es/tecnologia/redes/20140513/abci-derecho-olvido-google-costeja-201405130850.html
 

http://www.publico.es/520364/google-pierde-frente-al-derecho-al-olvido-en-internet

Image:

Carlos Luna, under Creative Commons Licence (CC BY 2.0)

 



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