Several big companies in the tech industry are crying foul over the recent European Union court ruling on netizen's personal information online. The landmark ruling yesterday will now allow individuals to submit requests to search engines and online publishers to take down links and personal information under their "right to be forgotten," Bloomberg said.
What deeply concerns the Internet industry is that the EU court has failed to provide parameters of the request, such as what information types should be removed or what data that are true or from a reliable source are exempted from being taken down online. This simply means that the ruling has allowed European users to flood Web companies with takedown requests, which could cost money and time to what the companies have already been doing in content removal. Bloomberg said that majority of the companies are already dealing with the compliance for various data laws and have subjected takedown requests to thorough legal analyses prior to removing them online.
Distinguished professor Fred Cate at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law said, "It's just such a mind-bogglingly impossible decision. Courts aren't responsible for the practical implications of rulings but this really staggers the imagination."
Bloomberg said that the EU decision will have an effect on Google, Bing of Microsoft Corp, and Yahoo Inc.
Director Justin Brookman of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Project on Consumer Privacy said the manpower needed to comply with the expected deluge of takedown requests would be astonishing. "They'd have to hire an army of compliance officers (that it would make it difficult for companies to) scalably compete online."
Yahoo spokeswoman Sarah Meron said about the ruling, "Since our founding almost 20 years ago, we've supported an open and free Internet; not one shaded by censorship. We're now carefully reviewing the European Court of Justice's decision to assess the impact for our business and for our users."
Bloomberg said that the latest legal development in the Internet industry shows how Europe and the US are diverging on their stringent approach to privacy, following the revelations of Edward Snowden on electronic-spying practices of the US National Security Agency.
