Google sets up 'right to be forgotten' form after EU ruling

[Ruptga]

I'm also interested to see how this plays out. It could be a clusterfuck, or it could be great for the entire internet.

Example: someone with money tries to ruin a doctor with malpractice suits and bad press, but the courts find no wrongdoing. Without a way to purge records those false accusations will continue to ruin the doctor long after they're dismissed.

Also of note:

Information will only disappear from searches made in Europe. Queries piped through its sites outside the region will still show the contested data.

 

[biostud]

Actually, that should already be supported - she should contact newspaper and ask them to remove inaccurate story (or else they can get sued for slander). Once the story is removed, it will no longer appear in search engines.

In this specific case, the ruling says: even if by law, the story has the right to be displayed in newspaper, an individual has a right to remove it from the search engine, essentially making what is deemed public information non-discoverable.

The problem with that is that the newspaper would still have to make the official denial available, but then the original story would not be found.

The good thing about this is that you can still find the stories, but you have to go to the newspapers homepage and do the search there. So that it doesn't erase history, but make you work a little more to find old/irrelevant/wrong information about private persons. So journalists and other who know how to dig this up can still find out about it.

I think this ruling is a step in the right direction, but of course must be taken up to evaluation if it is abused.