CYBERLAW | EUROPEAN UNION

Following the recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Google Spain v AEPD and Mario Costeja Gonzalez (C-131/12), which basically stated that search engine providers are obliged to remove links to personal information not longer relevant due to the passage of time, today Google announced that it will comply with the ruling and that EU citizens will have the opportunity to request such link removal by submitting a form, which can be found here.

Google intends to evaluate each individual request and balance an individual’s right to privacy with the right of the public to receive and distribute information: „When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information – for example, we may decline to remove certain information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions or public conduct of government officials.“

The announcement further states that „[y]ou will need a digital copy of a form of identification to complete this form. If you are submitting this request on behalf of someone else, you will need to supply identification for them. Fields marked with an asterisk * must be completed for your request to be submitted.“ In addition to identifying themselves, requesters are also asked to provide a list of the links they wish to be removed along with an explanation why.

According to unnofficial information, within two days of the CJEU’s decision, Google received over 1000 requests from EU citizens requesting removal of links from the search results list. Commenting the CJEU’s decision in an interview with Financial Times, Google’s co-founder Larry Page shared some interesting statistics regarding the requests for removal submitted to Google up to that point. He stated that 31% of the requests from the UK and Ireland related to frauds or scams, 20% to arrests or convictions for violent or serious crimes, 12% to child pornography arrests, 5% to the government and police, and 2% related to celebrities.

He also stated that Google will take a new, more cautious approach towards the European market. He stated that they will try to view things more from the European perspective from now on, but he also cautioned of some negative implications of the CJEU’s judgment, such as giving way to censorship and reducing maneuvar space for innovations and proliferation of small internet companies.

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Jasmina Mutabžija

Founding editor at Loganizer

Jasmina Mutabžija is a Croatian legal consultant and entrepreneur. She is the founder of Loganizer and is currently a manager of the Croatian IT company POSLuH, based in Zagreb, Croatia. A faculty member of the PAR Business School in Rijeka, Croatia, she teaches business law and regularly presents at legal conferences. She has written many journal articles and several book chapters, mostly in the fields of intellectual property law and internet law, which are her specialties. She holds an LL.B from the University of Rijeka, an LL.M in intellectul property law from the University of Turin and a Ph.D in commercial and company law from the University of Zagreb. She is currently studying business and management at the University of London.

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