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GOOGLE HAS RESTRICTED access to a BBC blog posting and several British newspaper stories under a legal ruling granting people a right to be “forgotten” in search engines, it emerged on Thursday.
BBC economics editor Robert Peston complained that Google had “killed this example of my journalism” after being informed that a 2007 posting about former Merrill Lynch chairman Stan O’Neal had been removed from certain searches in Europe.
The Guardian newspaper also said it had been notified that six links to its stories had been removed from search results, three of them about a 2010 controversy involving a now-retired Scottish Premier League referee.
The newspaper said it was given no reason and had no appeal against the decision, the result of a ruling by the European Court of Justice in May that the paper said was a “huge, if indirect, challenge to press freedom”.
The court ruled that individuals have the right to have links to information about them deleted from searches in certain circumstances, such as if the data is outdated or inaccurate.
Google, the world’s leading search engine, has said that each request would be examined individually to determine whether it met the ruling’s criteria.
Mail Online, the world’s biggest news site, said it had received notification that links to a story about the same Scottish referee, Dougie McDonald, had been removed from certain searches.
Other stories restricted include one about a couple caught having sex on a train, and another about a Muslim man who accused the airline Cathay Pacific of refusing to employ him because of his name.
‘Like burning books’
“These examples show what a nonsense the right to be forgotten is. It is the equivalent of going into libraries and burning books you don’t like,” said Martin Clarke, the publisher of Mail Online.
He said the website would regularly publish lists of articles removed from Google’s European search results, while the BBC and The Guardian also published links to the restricted stories.
The links remain visible on Google.com, the US version of the site, and the restrictions only appear to relate to certain search terms.
A commentary in The Guardian noted that a search for Dougie McDonald no longer brought up its story on Google.co.uk, but a search for “Scottish referee who lied” worked fine.
According to the story, McDonald was found to have lied about his reasons for granting a penalty in a Celtic v Dundee United match.
Google told the BBC that it had since received 50,000 requests for articles to be removed, although they remain anonymous.
A spokeswoman told AFP: “We have recently started taking action on the removals requests we’ve received after the European Court of Justice decision.
“This is a new and evolving process for us. We’ll continue to listen to feedback and will also work with data protection authorities and others as we comply with the ruling,” she said.
So will the families of Saville and Harris apply for this ‘right to be forgotten’ in 10 years time I wonder? Absolute rubbish. If you break the law while in the public eye, tough
@ÉiRed
Nonsense. Knowing the identities of sex offenders is in the public interest. Therefore, the Savile and Harris families would be unsuccessful if they applied for it.
“Knowing the identities of sex offenders is in the public interest.”
Everything mentioned in the article above is in the public’s interest, otherwise they (BBC) wouldn’t have published the articles.
@Cpm
No information about sex offenders or others convicted of serious criminal offences has been removed from the Google search engine.
So basically this is just a form of censorship dressed up as an ” internet janitor ” Down with this sort of thing.
This is absolutely disgusting. The Mail Online is that popular? Outrageous.
Should be able to get them on http://www.duckduckgo.com as Google doesn’t own the internet.
And that’s exactly why Google should not be forced to carry out this ‘Right to be Forgotten’ lark. Google is not the internet and it should not be their responsibility to remove these links. What about Bing, Yahoo and all the other search engines? Are they being forced to do this?
Ridiculous. How often do you say you binged something or yahooed it? Never, you google it. What is the first page when you open the internet browser? What is it called, Yahoo Chrome or Google Chrome.
Therefore Google is the internet. Why are the internet generation so stupid???
Bing actually
You can always just use the US Google site where the information isn’t removed from their searches; by putting /ncr after the address http://www.google.com/ncr likewise for any country specific site outside of the EU.
Oh good. I have a few things online I don’t want the general public to know about.
Too late and you should be ashamed of yourself. But how do you get your legs that high at your age?
Oh stop judging me, I’m an old woman. And to answer your question, I get a lot of practise. ;)
Was the referee Dougie McDonald?
What’s his story?
Just googled him….he tells lies….
I would say Google it, but….
This is all about control and we should drmand that it is stopped immediately.
So any decent alternative search engine to google? Stupid eu censorship!
As mentioned in the article, the results are still available from google.com
Other alternative search engines are http://www.duckduckgo.com and http://www.bing.com
I’ve found recently that in some areas Bing provides better results than Google, so the gap isn’t what it used to be.
That said, if you’re generally worried about your internet privacy, you should be using duckduckgo.com for that reason alone.
There is some suggestion that Google has been deliberately over-aggressive in the way the have implemented the right to be forgotten in an attempt to turn it into an issue so that it might be overturned.
“I’ve found recently that in some areas Bing provides better results than Google”
They’re still nowhere good as Google. Only a while back, they were caught using Google’s results to reorder their own rankings.
I searched for this article on Google and it is not there as dougie mcdougle is mentioned.
have your say