A legal expert said that the European court ruling made on Tuesday about an individual's "right to be forgotten" in search engines and online publishers could have a big impact on the way online publishers put information online.
Lead solicitor Simon McGarr at McGarr Solicitors in Ireland told PCWorld, "This will have commercial consequences, by making newspaper and other media archive paywalls more economically attractive. If a researcher can't be sure that a Google index will return all the relevant returns on an individual, the value of reliable private archives is bound to increase. It makes economic sense as researchers looking for reliable information are frequently those who are most willing to pay."
According to the ruling of the European Court of Justice, Google Inc would have to comply with the request of one Costeja González to remove all personal information on its search engine, in particular the links to a Spanish newspaper article that discusses the plaintiff's foreclosure. González reportedly argued with success that the links published by Google were now inadequate and irrelevant over time.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association had also expressed its disagreement with the EU court ruling, of which the latter said that the linking to lawfully available information could breach privacy laws. CCIA Vice President James Waterworth told PCWorld that research and data mining information will now be more laborious and painful to do. Moreover, the ruling supposedly somewhat opened the door to large-scale private censorship in the European region.
"Up to now companies left decisions to courts to decide on a case-by-case basis. But this ruling seems to place more responsibility on the private actor with no accompanying process. For the time being, there is a greater risk for them if they don't take links down," he added.
On the other hand, McGarr believes that the case is just simply unique to dictate how search engines and online publishers put information online.
