A time when I googled my name (no comment) one of the first Results it was a blog post accusing me of a strange "conversion" in my animal reporting.
Although I had responded to the author himself and, say, the misunderstanding had been solved, the linkage remained for years hanging high on my search for it Google. Fortunately today it's kind of lost (I refuse to look for it) behind other results about reporting, however I could ask the engine search to remove it as defamatory, a request that would likely be granted.
Since last May, when the European Court of Justice ruling has come into force according to which each of us, under certain conditions, has the right to require search engines to remove specific results, more than half a million Europeans have flooded Google with requests. Only in the first month of the ruling, more than 70.000 users rushed to ask Google to delete specific links to them, judging that the information contained in them "is inappropriate, has ceased to exist or is excessive". Now, the company has made available to users a relevant online form, which anyone can fill in to submit a link removal request.
According to information, hundreds are the Greeks who have also invoked the "right to oblivion". Last example, the actress Argyris Angelos, typing the name of which on Google was automatically completing the word "gay". The actor asked the company to delete the specific results by completing the relevant form, while appealing against it and court (lost the case after it was judged that the issue had already been resolved through the online process).
It is worth noting that ever since, searching for information through Google for Mr. Angelos, there is a footnote that "some results may have been abolished under the new European data protection law". There are already pressures on the company not to display this information on the "items" to which links have been removed based on the judgment of the European Court of Justice. It is clarified, however, that search engines have an obligation to delete only the relevant results, not their source. The defamatory texts continue to be online, they simply do not come up with a simple search. This was Google's first line of defense that it is not itself responsible for the personal data that appears on its pages.
Although evolution has been enthusiastically welcomed by a large part of the population who saw a victory of the movement in favor of the protection of personal data on the Internet, there have been doubts as to whether such intervention is ultimately in our interest. "Is that how we" retouch "the past to such an extent that we will rewrite history?", Is the question that arises.
Reactions
In any case, the debate is lively, with defenders of the right to be forgotten on one side and those of the right to information and expression on the other. They are already recorded reactions from journalists no longer finding their articles in searches, most famously the case of BBC finance editors who saw their earlier article on the former chairman of investment firm Merrill Lynch, Stan O'Neill, disappear.
Source: kathimerini.gr
