The European Court of Justice recently ruled people had the “right to be forgotten” – and could therefore request that articles in Google search results be removed and Google searches linked to the individual could also be taken down if they harmed their reputation. This writer doesn’t like the fact that the courts believe links in a search could potentially “harm” someone’s reputation. Like Dr. Maya Angelou said, “The truth is a stubborn fact.” No matter how many times it comes up in a Google, Bing, Yahoo, MSN or whoever search, if it’s the truth, it should be made known.
Is this censorship? What happened to freedom of speech? We have it in the U.S. and the Europeans submit to Article 17 of the European Data Protection Regulation, which says Internet users who are mentioned in data have the right to “obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data relating to them and the abstention from further dissemination of such data.”
A Google spokesperson tells media: “The ruling has significant implications for how we handle takedown requests. This is logistically complicated – not least because of the many languages involved and the need for careful review. As soon as we have thought through exactly how this will work, which may take several weeks, we will let our users know.”
To me, this ruling is equivalent to saying the Sex Offender registry is unconstitutional. Don’t we deserve to know who our neighbors really are?
I declare World Wide Web War!
