Internet
giant Google has received more than 12,000 requests from people in Europe
wanting past information from their lives to be "forgotten" in online
searches. The case pits privacy against freedom of information.
Google
opened up an online form late this week that allowed people to ask for certain
information to be removed from the search engine's results. Within the first 24
hours, Google confirmed late on Friday, more than 12,000 requests were
submitted, sometimes at a rate of more than 20 entries per minute.
Google was
responding to a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling from May 13, which found
that citizens should be able to request this of the company. The ruling applies
to the 28 EU member countries, although Google agreed to broaden the catchment
area to include Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
"The
court's ruling requires Google to make difficult judgments about an
individual's right to be forgotten and the public's right to know," a
Google spokesman said.
The case of
a Spanish man who objected to the fact that searches of his name revealed links
to an old newspaper article about the repossession of his home prompted the ECJ
to issue the advisory ruling. Data protection representatives from the EU's 28
members are due to discuss the ruling's implications in a two-day meeting next
week.
Any data
"forgotten" by Google, which mostly provides links to material
published by others, is not deleted or removed from the Internet - only from
Google search results.
Past
privacy rulings
Advocates
hailed the decision as an advancement of personal privacy in the Internet age,
while critics have either said it amounts to censorship, or that it could serve
to help the rich, powerful or criminal to conceal information.
In January,
a German court ordered Google to block search results in German linking to
photos of a role-playing sex-party, set in a prison environment, involving
former FIA President Max Mosley. France had issued a similar court order to
Google on the Mosley case late last year.
The former
head of motorsport's global governing body, also a key Formula One figure for
more than a decade, survived an FIA members' vote of confidence in 2008 related
to the scandal, first reported in Britain's now-defunct Sunday paper the News
of the World. However, in 2009, Mosley agreed not to run for a fifth term as
FIA president.
msh/rc (AFP, AP, Reuters)
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