Internet 'Right to be Forgotten' debate hits Spain

[cory777]

Source: Associated Press

MADRID – Their ranks include a plastic surgeon, a prison guard and a high school principal. All are Spanish, but have little else in common except this: They want old Internet references about them that pop up in Google searches wiped away.

In a case that Google Inc. and privacy experts call a first of its kind, Spain's Data Protection Agency has ordered the search engine giant to remove links to material on about 90 people. The information was published years or even decades ago but is available to anyone via simple searches.

Scores of Spaniards lay claim to a "Right to be Forgotten" because public information once hard to get is now so easy to find on the Internet. Google has decided to challenge the orders and has appealed five cases so far this year to the National Court.

Some of the information is embarrassing, some seems downright banal. A few cases involve lawsuits that found life online through news reports, but whose dismissals were ignored by media and never appeared on the Internet. Others concern administrative decisions published in official regional gazettes.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_internet_right_to_be_forgotten

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Activist News http://activistnews.blogspot.com/

[snagglepuss]

1. Good idea. nt

[rpannier]

2. I'm solidly behind it nt

[freshwest]

3. Good for Spain. Google makes money off it. If they won't pay us, quit doing it.

[Rage for Order]

4. Google (and others) should be required to get a signed release from everyone

To display anything more than the information one can traditionally find in a telephone book: name, address, and phone number. Beyond that, people should have to explicitly consent to disclosure of information, and it should have to be removed from search results upon request.

[starroute]

5. Too much of a slippery slope

I already get frustrated with Wikipedia because I know that most entries on conservative politicians and groups are going to have been scrubbed of anything even vaguely discreditable. I also regularly find that stories I saved some years ago are no longer available -- and this appears to be particularly true of those that might prove embarrassing to powerful parties.

It's one thing to want your personal information not to appear online -- but asking for the right to remove information that is already in the public domain is simply censorship and is ripe to be abused for political purposes.