British media said Google abuse of the right to be forgotten

In early July, Google, the search engine giant, was "besieged" by a number of British media that accused it of over-fulfilling the "forgotten rights" in the European Data Protection Act and adopting a very sloppy, Cruel ways to directly delete name-related search links, and Google believes that this move is strictly enforced in May this year, a European Supreme Court verdict. The two sides each stick to the word, by the "forgotten rights" controversy has caused widespread concern in Europe and throughout the world.

British media said Google abuse of the right to be forgotten

In early July, several heavyweights of the British media, such as The Times, The Daily Mail and the BBC, jointly challenged the search engine Google over-fulfilling the European Supreme Court's " Forgotten right "a ruling. The three major media groups collectively questioned Google has significantly exceeded the boundaries of the award.

The European Court of Justice's ruling on "forgotten rights" stems from a lawsuit filed against Google by Mario Gusti González, a Spanish citizen. Mario argues that Google failed to delete an article in the Herald published in 1998 concerning his address on Vatican real estate and related unhealthy records. He said: "My name house has been auctioned to repay social security debt, and Google should no longer associate my name with the house. I just hope that the relevant information about my personal reputation and property negatively impact no longer display."

The Supreme Court of Europe finally ruled in May that "the right to be forgotten" was already set out in the existing data protection laws in Europe. The plaintiff's request that Google delete its "insufficient, irrelevant and unrelated" information should be protected by the Data Protection Law Content. However, this protection is not absolute. If the parties are public figures, they need to balance the needs of society with the wishes of the parties involved.

Google was disappointed with the verdict of the European Supreme Court at that time, but still promised to take the relevant measures to fulfill the verdict. May 29, Google set up a special page (only in Europe), for the user to fill out the form to submit the relevant application, after the approval, Google will make the decision whether to delete the user information related links. But the relevant information in the original site will not be deleted, the user is still able to Google or change the search criteria to search for relevant information. So far, Google has received more than 70,000 user applications, were requested to remove the 276,000 web page links.

Accused of contravening the European Court of Justice

The European Supreme Court's ruling and the "forgotten rights" re-sparked the hot debate in July on the grounds that recently BBC correspondent Robert Paisston found out that in 2007 it was released on the securities firm Merrill Lynch boss Stan O'Neill The article dismissed by the subprime mortgage crisis was removed by Google from the search results. Paisley expressed a great anger on Google's behavior, because he believes the content of his article is real. He said angrily that Google's use of such a "clumsy" way to enforce the European Court of Justice's judgment and to begin to block articles on the news site using the name as a search target is grossly crude and incorrect.

On July 2, the Guardian newspaper also found six of its articles were removed by Google from its search results, three of which were related to the English Football League referee Volker in a game "found to be in a penalty shoot-out Lying on the "report.

Daily Mail publisher Martin Clarke told the Associated Press he believes the article's link to the Daily Mail is now removed from search results by Google as if it were " How to deal with the book? Burned directly! "This simple and crude treatment. Some media outlets also question Google's use of the sloppy, crude approach of directly deleting name-related search links and believe that this "less, irrelevant, unrelated" message from European Supreme Court judgments can be attributed It is against the principle that "forgotten rights" entitle the search engine to be removed from its search results.

Or abused to modify personal credit

In response, Ryan Heath, spokesman for Nelly Clos, vice chairman of the European Commission, said: "I do not think Google's analogy is based on the public interest. The" forgotten rights "rule does not mean that citizens You can 'change their life trajectory' like trying out software. '

The Times News and Media Operations spokesman said we are constantly watching for attempts to delete our links, the European Court of Justice requires Google to review people's applications for deletion on a case-by-case basis, but Google now appears to be over-fulfilling "Forgotten rights." If the ultimate goal of the European Court of Justice is not to encourage publishers to use illegitimate avenues to solve their current woes, we hope Google will be able to publicize the reasons and the ways in which they deleted the link. Because with May's verdict, some limited companies have even introduced tools to help individuals assess credibility and remove unfavorable personal search results.

Julia Balls, a research scholar at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, said that the fulfillment of the "right to be forgotten" is obviously not what people assumed at the time the verdict was made. Julia Perls pointed out that the current legal review is conducted by a newly appointed legal team from Google, but the composition of the team is not satisfactory, in fact, this is a team consisting of assistant lawyers Is not a true lawyer. Its professionalism and the accuracy of legal provisions should be questioned. She pointed out that Google should also make more publicity about how to handle the applicant's review, such as determining what kind of training the author has been trained in and what specific principles they follow in making the specific decision.

In response to all the questions and condemnation caused by this incident, a Google spokesman argued: "We are strictly implementing the European Court of Justice's decision, but how to delete the relevant links and review the specific procedures and methods for us is also a freshman Things, we will continue to listen to feedback, and work with the relevant data protection departments to better fulfill the court's decision. "

However, Google spokesman's statement can not calm the voices of all parties questioned, therefore, Google in the concrete implementation of "forgotten rights" two months after the resulting hot debate is still continuing to heat up.

Glossary: ​​"Forgotten Rights"

Under the existing data protection laws in Europe, users have "forgotten rights," meaning that users have the right to require search engines to remove outdated data from the search results page that could harm their public image, their names and related historical events.