Google loses UK case over ‘right to forget’ over conviction

A British judge has ordered Google to remove search results in a case brought by a businessman. The information about the man’s conviction would no longer be relevant.

The Guardian writes that the case may have “far-reaching consequences” and that the judge recognizes that granting the complainant’s claims could mean that more such cases will be filed. In the present case there were two complainants, one of which was granted and the other’s claim was rejected. In both cases, the complainants demanded the removal of search results about their conviction, which linked to news reports in various media. Google refused to remove the results.

In the case lost by Google, the judge ruled that the complainant had “repented” and that the information about the crime and punishment is outdated, irrelevant, and no longer of enough value for Google users to require longer availability. to make. In the dismissed case, the judge said the convict continued to mislead people and expressed no regrets. The complainants had completed prison sentences of six months and four years respectively.

Google said in a response to the newspaper that “it respects the ruling.” It said: “We are working hard to comply with the right to be forgotten, but also be careful not to delete results that are of public interest and we will defend the right of access to lawful information.”

The European Court of Justice ruled in May 2014 that Europeans have a ‘right to be forgotten’, which could oblige search engines to remove URLs from search results if the information constitutes a privacy breach. Since then, Google has received a total of approximately 654,000 removal requests for 2.4 million URLs across the EU. The search giant wrote in a recent transparency report that it removed 900,000 of those between May 2014 and February 2018.