I don't think you understand what the "right to be forgotten" actually is. The point is not that someone who has done bad things can just demand that the entire world magically forget about it and give them a clean slate.
[Edit: In a discussion about whether this behaviour amounts to censorship, within 2 minutes of posting, someone has downvoted this comment even though all it does is point out what appears to be a widely held misconception about the subject matter and provide a credible source. If that's not irony...]
After reading your link, it sounds like peter understands it just fine.
He did say "send takedown request to Google".. and that's exactly the situation that is described in your PDF when discussing the case. The article says the court decided that the newspaper archive would be kept intact, and Google would need to delete the links -- and this was the correct balance of the public's right to know.
In fact, from my reading of the article, I'm having a hard time thinking of a case where Google could refuse to delete a link -- since Google only links to other people's content, and that content will be available even if Google's links to it are deleted.
Edit: the quote:
The case itself provides an example of this balancing exercise. While the Court ordered Google to delete access to the
information deemed irrelevant by the Spanish citizen, it also emphasised that the content of the underlying newspaper
archive should not be changed in the name of data protection (paragraph 88 of the Court’s ruling). The Spanish citizens’
data is still accessible but is no longer ubiquitous. This is enough for the citizen’s privacy to be respected.
> In fact, from my reading of the article, I'm having a hard time thinking of a case where Google could refuse to delete a link.
How about the case discussed right here? The summary linked above says:
The request may for example be turned down where the search engine operator concludes that for particular reasons, such as for example the public role played by John Smith, the interest of the general public to have access to the information in question justifies showing the links in Google search results.
That seems like it could be pretty easily satisfied in this case: Stanley O'Neal is a major business figure with a clear public role, serving on the board that controls gigantic multinational corporation Alcoa. Given that powerful role, it's in the interest of the general public to be able to search for and find information about his recent past in positions of power at other gigantic multinational corporations, such as major events during his CEOship at Merrill Lynch.
The main practical problem, imo, is that Google is unlikely to want to put in the resources that would be necessary to make case-by-case determinations, and would therefore probably just err on the side of deleting anything requested. But taken in isolation, this particular case really seems like one of the easier cases in which to reject the request, which they would probably win if litigated. Perhaps not quite as easy as if it were Silvio Berlusconi asking for articles about his political career to be delinked (that request would be really clearly rejectable), but O'Neal is still clearly a public figure, and the article in question was also about his public role as CEO (while the Mario Costeja González case was about the personal bankruptcy filing of a pretty obscure individual).
this particular case really seems like one of the easier cases in which to reject the request, which they would probably win if litigated.
Which is exactly the problem with this law -- if Google wants to reject a request, the burden of proof is on Google to prove that the information should NOT be deleted. While you may believe Google could win this case, you're suggesting Google spend legal resources (and money) fighting over a few links... and that they should do that every time they get a bogus request. AND if they repeatedly do this and lose their case, Google may be subject to fines of 2% of worldwide annual revenue (over $1B/year).
Why would Google ever decline a request when the penalty is $1B/year?
That's certainly a possible concern, but I'm not sure it's the one in question here. Is there much chance that: 1) O'Neal would actually sue; and/or 2) win? My guess is that if Google rejected his request, he wouldn't sue. Both because of the bad publicity, and because he's in a fairly weak position to invoke this right with respect to his past as CEO of Merill Lynch, a very public role.
I think the bigger issue for Google isn't their fear of fines and/or losing lawsuits if they really did make case-by-case determinations, but rather than difficulty & expense of putting together any kind of system for case-by-case determinations in the first place. They tend not to want to put together such systems, as can also be seen in the "delete first, ask questions later" approach to letting music labels delete videos on YouTube after algorithmically scanning, not even requiring the labels to put together a proper under-penalty-of-perjury DMCA request. I'm sympathetic to that position from a practical perspective, but I think it's a somewhat different problem. The problem here is that even if it is perfectly possible to make case-by-case decisions in a reliably compliant way, Google just doesn't do case-by-case decisions in that manner, for business reasons: their entire business model is automated decisions at scale, not manual curation of content.
Does Google want to do a good job of assessing requests?
I think it highly unlikely that the court would want this article suppressed. I think Google may be taking things down over enthusiastically to bring the law and the ruling into disrepute. They are betting that the law rather than their particular takedown process will be blamed.
The law imposes a penalty if an appropriate request is not honored, but does not, as I understand, do so if an inappropriate request is honored. It therefore encourages exactly the behavior Google is taking, because erring on the side of taking things down is the legally safe approach.
The DMCA notice/counternotice arrangement has a similar but more subtle effect, because while it is superficially symmetric, the situation of the parties with respect to it is asymmetric in a way which results in the one side systematically being privileged.
Are you sure that is right? Penalties for contempt of court, for not having a process or for always denying requests as a process I can imagine but can you link to anything referring to the penalties for making wrong judgements in this area.
I'm quite sympathetic to the idea that the rules may be wrong or could be made better but I think that there being some control in this area is a good idea on balance.
The FAQ someone linked to refers to balance of freedom of speech and data protection so there is the possibilities of complaints from both sides.
Google representative on the radio today indicated that the search result suppressed is for one of the thread's commenters and not for the bank executive's name which will still return the correct link.
Given this my comment is probably too harsh, there is no evidence that Google isn't properly assessing requests that I am aware of.
You might find this summary PDF informative:
http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets...
[Edit: In a discussion about whether this behaviour amounts to censorship, within 2 minutes of posting, someone has downvoted this comment even though all it does is point out what appears to be a widely held misconception about the subject matter and provide a credible source. If that's not irony...]