The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that Google must delete data that is "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" from search results when a member of the public requests.
The case was taken by Spanish national, Mario Costeja González, when he failed in his attempts to have an auction notice of his repossessed home deleted. The notice dating back to 1998 was published on the website of Catalonia, a mass circulation newspaper.
Mr. González claimed the matter of his house being auction to recover social security debts had been resolved and, therefore, should be forgotten.
The Court of Justice held that under EU law on data protection, Google must erase links to two webpages on the website of La Vanguardia.
The Court made it clear in ruling that EU law had already established "a right to be forgotten". Moreover, the Court found that the inclusion of links a member of the public wants removed:
on the grounds that he wishes the information appearing on those pages relating to him personally to be 'forgotten' after a certain time ...
was incompatible with EU law on data protection.
The Court found the data that had to be erased could:
appear to be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive ... in light of the time that has elapsed.
The Court added:
that even initially lawful processing of accurate data may, in the course of time, become incompatible with the directive ...
Moreover, the Court emphasised the need to strike a balance between the right to privacy and freedom of expression. An exception to the right to privacy was the role played by an individual in public life, the Court ruled.
In effect, the judgment means that search engines as a data controller has a responsibility for the content that it links to. As a result, search engines may be required to remove links even if the material was previously published legally.
