The battle over a European court ruling that gave average citizens the "right to be forgotten" and have links about themselves removed by the top search engines is not going to be ending in the near future.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are meeting with Europe's top data protection officials to figure out how exactly to implement the European Court of Justice ruling.
The regulators are part of the European Union's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party and will meet the big three companies in Brussels. They are expected to voice their frustration and concern over how Google has thus far implemented the court ruling, which has seen controversy after the search company removed links to notable public figures.
The meeting follows the beginning of the de-linking process, which has received over 70,000 requests since the ruling in May. Google in June first began removing a number of links through the requests that had come in, but it got backlash after removing a number of articles about Merrill Lynch and its role in the financial crisis. Those links have since been restored, but it highlighted the gulf between the court and how to implement the decision.
It created much debate after those articles that were supposedly to "be forgotten" received widespread attention, in what is known as the Streisand effect. This drew much criticism from watchdogs, who accused Google of attempting to drive public opinion against the move and strike a fear of censorship into the general population.
"The more they do so, it means the media organisation republishes the information and so much for the right to be forgotten. There is an issue there," said Billy Hawkes, the Irish data protection commissioner.
Since that controversy, top officials have called on Google to do more to ensure that the links being removed are pertinent and are not of public interest. This is mainly the reason the companies and the top regulators are meeting in Brussels in an effort to figure out how to proceed with de-linking.
"The polluter pays, the polluter should clear up," Christopher Graham, the UK information commissioner, was quoted as saying. "Google is a massive commercial organization making millions, millions and millions out of processing people's personal information. They're going to have to do some tidying up."
