In the company's efforts to comply with a surprising European Union court ruling, Google Inc has already devised an online form for Europeans who wishes to invoke their right to be forgotten online. The form will now have anyone in the EU region to fill in a request to delete all of their online information, Bloomberg noted.
Aside from the form, Google reportedly created a committee composed of Internet experts who will provide advisory services to the search engine company regarding the May 13 decision from the E's top coirt. The committee, of whom Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is also a member, is to aide Google in how to carry out a court mandate in order to avoid a potential intervention from a court or a data-protection authority should the search engine company fail to address a customer's request.
The EU's justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, commended the Google's measures to comply with data protection laws in the euro zone. She said, "It was about time. The move demonstrates that fears of practical impossibility raised before were unfounded."
The compliance of Google and other search engine and online publishing companies does not mean that they are for the clampdown of Internet privacy in the 28-nation EU. Google's chief executive officer, Larry Page, was among the many who have frowned upon the potential abuse of the "right to be forgotten" by individuals or entities. In his interview with the Financial Times, Page said that the ruling, could be for one, be used by repressive regimes as their means to censor Internet in their jurisdiction.
"It will be used by other governments that aren't as forward and progressive as Europe to do bad things," Page had said.
However, Reding dismissed the interpretation of the EU court ruling to Internet freedom. She added, "(The right to be forgotten and the right to free information) are not foes but friends. It's not about protecting one at the expense of the other but striking the right balance in order to protect both. The European court made it clear that two rights do not make a wrong and has given clear directions on how this balance can be found and where the limits of the right to be forgotten lie," she said. "It is mass surveillance not data protection that legitimizes the actions of repressive regimes."
