Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) should not heed to the ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling, said Lords committee. The committee said that the internet giant should not abide by the European Court of Justice because it is ‘unreasonable’ and ‘unworkable,’ according to a report from The Guardian.
No legal rights to delete data
The committee demands that Google should not allow thousands of people to hide their past. Among the 90,000 people, who requested Google to pull off links, include Paedophiles, doctors and politicians, as well.
Baroness Prashar, co-writer of the report, said that individuals should not have the right to get those information removed that are accurate, and also within the legal perspective, just for the reason that they don’t like it.
‘We also believe that it’s wrong in principle to leave search engines themselves the task of deciding whether to delete information or not, based on vague, ambiguous and unhelpful criteria.’ Out of the total requests made, Google has agreed to delete the links for around half of them, but said that it has to act as ‘judge and jury.’
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, said the ruling was a ‘very dangerous path to go down.’
Google asked to take ruling globally
However, European Union’s highest court thinks that Google should expand its “right to be forgotten” policy globally. Google had no option, but to remove the links of the individuals, even for those accused of frauds and other serious crimes because they requested the search engine to forget it.
The links are just removed from the European sites like google.co.uk., and users can get full access to the information by visiting the United States version of the site at Google.com. Google was chided for limiting its policy just to Europe as regulators said that it effectively defeated the purpose of the ruling.
There is no mention of the method of handling the requests on various national sites. Rather the ruling just states that the links and information in the list must be erased, not even specifying the sites, where such deletion should occur.
A report from Reuters said that Google has hired a panel of high-profile academics, policymakers, and civil society experts to suggest a way in which the ruling should be implemented for over 70,000 requests so far.
