The European Court of Justice's latest decision that their citizens should have the "right to be forgotten" in search results by Google could cause problems for the definition and boundaries of free speech.
The decision was the result of a complaint by Spaniard Mario Costeja González, who wanted newspaper reports on his old unpaid debts found through Google search to be taken down. The Spanish data protection authority supported his complaint to Google.
Google appealed the decision to the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice. The court ruled that Google should give its users the ability to remove links of themselves that can be searched online.
The court added that even though the personal information is correct and had been published to the Internet legally, the continued publication of the data could violate the EU laws on data protection with the lapse of time.
In the United States, sentiments on the court's decision has been primarily negative, with some seeing it as gross limitation on free speech.
"Americans will find their searches bowdlerised by prissy European sensibilities," said former assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Stewart Baker.
"We'll be the big losers. The big winners will be French ministers who want the right to have their last mistress forgot."
In the May 13 ruling of the European Court of Justice, Google was tasked to provide responses to complaints of users that wanted private information regarding them be taken down from Google's search results. Google will decide if the general public has the right to know the information or if the person involved should be given control over the information, with more power given to the person.
Google, however, admits that the company is still not sure on how to comply with the ruling as Google does not yet have a working system for takedown requests.
American citizens, however, may not have the chance soon, or ever at all, to have such power over search results on their name. This is because the "right to be forgotten" rule would be contradictory to the First Amendment and the general understanding of Americans on freedom of speech and privacy. The only similar measure in the United States is a law passed in California that would take effect in 2015 and will allow minors to legally remove their online activities.
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has been very critical of the court ruling, saying that it is equivalent to censorship.
"The danger is that search engines now are faced with an uncertain legal future which may require them to censor all kinds of things when someone thinks it is 'irrelevant'," Wales said.
