The European Union Court of Justice ruled last year that links to certain stories containing old or outdated information about an individual could be removed from search engines upon request.
That means in Europe there is now a long list of "hidden" articles that don't appear in search results. Companies like Google don't remove the articles in question from the web. Instead, they merely hide them. They then contact the individual media organizations whose articles they've hidden to notify them of the act.
Google for one isn't happy about the ruling, nor are Internet activists who believe the ruling to be a form of censorship. It is still, however, the law. The BBC has managed to find a way to still be transparent about what kind of stories are becoming hidden by publishing a list of all the organization's "hidden stories" for the world to see.
"We think it is important that those with an interest in the "right to be forgotten" can ascertain which articles have been affected by the ruling," Neil McIntosh says on the blog post revealing the stories. "We hope it will contribute to the debate about this issue. We also think the integrity of the BBC's online archive is important and, although the pages concerned remain published on BBC Online, removal from Google searches makes parts of that archive harder to find."
You can browse the hundreds of links by clicking here. McIntosh points out that the individual media organizations are not notified about who requested the story be delisted, making it hard to determine exactly why a story may go dark.
"One caveat: when looking through this list it is worth noting that we are not told who has requested the delisting, and we should not leap to conclusions as to who is responsible," McIntosh says. "The request may not have come from the obvious subject of a story."
David Jordan, head of BBC's editorial policy, says he doesn't believe publishing the links brings more attention to those who requested to have them removed out of concerns for their privacy.
"It doesn't make [the stories] more findable for anybody looking for a name," he said.
What it does do is give readers a better understanding of the kind of material that is being removed.
"It's impossible to have a meaningful debate if you've not got an idea about what's being de-listed," he said.
It is possible for certain stories to be relisted on search engines. Google, for example, now has an appeal process that media organizations can go through in order to have an article relisted. In its first transparency report since the ruling back in May, Google said so far they have approved roughly 40 percent of all removal requests as part of the ruling.
Photo Credit: Paul Brannan | Flickr
