Yes, You Still Can Find Almost Anything You Want On The Web

Michael Hedges September 24, 2019 - Follow on Twitter

In the modern age - including the digital age - laws are there to be litigated. Certainly, not everybody is happy with rules, regulations and laws. Where rule of law is tantamount, this is normal. Laws and such are meant to be challenged: in the end that makes them stronger. With dictators, not so much.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued two, related rulings meant to clarify and, even, strengthen EU rules on privacy rights and freedom of expression. In the first - and most widely reported - the ECJ ruled that Google is not obligated to delist search results under the “right to be forgotten” rule outside the European Union. Then, second, the Court attempted legal clarity on how search engines apply the law. ECJ Advocate General Maciej Szpunar earlier this year offered that the Court "should limit the scope of the de-referencing that search engine operators are required to carry out, to the EU.” And that is exactly what the full Court decided. Google, as digital watchers noted, won this round.

The case before the ECJ was an appeal by Google of French data protection agency CNIL (Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés) imposing a €100,000 (about US$110,000) fine against the search portal in 2016 for refusing to delist (or de-reference) certain links, which four French individuals wanted unavailable in search results globally under the right to be forgotten provisions. It was the CNILs position that Google’s European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, hence within the European Union, did not have sufficient authority over data protection decisions. France’s highest court, the Council of State, received Google’s appeal and immediately kicked it up to the ECJ.

Lawmakers everywhere began tackling the onslaught of the digital age only when the tech giants were clearly calling the tune. In Europe much of this centered on age-old resistance to big American companies foisting their products and services on the population, to the detriment of European business. Attacking Hollywood for undermining European culture largely faded, replaced with a bigger fear of Silicon Valley. All recognized, slowly, that the digital revolution was out of their control, out of anyone’s control.

The European Commission established data protection rules in 1995. Fifteen years later then-Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding proposed updated rules, including a right to be forgotten that would require search engines to delist links to material available on the internet declared objectionable, out of date or incorrect. Eventually, this and other rules would become the EU’s General Data Protection Rules (GDPR). Legal disagreements between the EU and the US companies continue.

"The balance between the protection of privacy and the freedom of expression of Internet users is likely to vary around the world,” noted the ECJ ruling (September 24). US law, for example, strongly protects freedom of expression, privacy rights not so much. European jurisdictions, for historical and cultural reasons, give more weight to privacy concerns and view freedom of expression through a very different lens. Hence, privacy in important and hate speech is forbidden. Nearly all the big tech companies in the sights of the European Commission are fundamentally under US jurisdiction. (See more about the privacy issue here)

"Currently, there is no obligation under EU law, for a search engine operator who grants a request for dereferencing made by a data subject,” concluded the Court in the first instance, “to carry out such a dereferencing on all the versions of its search engine.” In the second instance, the Court admonished Google (et.al.) to “prevent or, at the very least, seriously discourage internet users” from avoiding country-specific search portals (google.fr, google.de) for the more universal google.com. The ECJ returned the question of how, exactly, to do that to CNIL.

See also...

• Hot Topics - Digital Transitions

• Hot Topics - The Privacy Issue