When it comes to information being posted on the Internet, it is sometimes impossible to erase certain personal footprints left behind. However, Google and other search engines are now being forced to remove links to websites that have personal information posted.
The European Union's high court earlier this year ruled in favor of people's "right to be forgotten." Google has currently granted the wishes to remove their personal information in about half of the hundreds of thousands of private citizen requests.
While citizens may be pleased to find their private information will be censored, the ruling could have a different effect on media. Both BBC News and the Guardian have had stories banned from Google search results. The censorship has also affected European Google searches for five news stories reported by the New York Times.
The banned New York Times articles include two wedding announcements published "years ago," a 2001 death notice, a news story about fraud and websites from 2002 and a feature story about a 1998 off-Broadway theater production that was popular among the "generation raised on MTV."
While most banned articles on the list don't necessarily threaten the freedom of the press, the removal of the last two articles raises some eyebrows.
The news story was banned because it named two men from London in the case, and after they reached a settlement, the defendants probably wanted the article banned to clear their names.
The reason why the MTV generation story was pulled is a little more ambiguous. Google won't say exactly who in the story wanted the article removed because of the "right to be forgotten" law. An investigation found that the person could potentially be a bystander who was quoted, not anyone mentioned in the production.
The feature story describes the person as a "damp, disheveled, wild-eyed" 27-year-old, the image of the MTV generation. The person might have wanted to erase this past description when Googled.
It might not be such a big deal that an entire news story was banned because one person wanted to remove their virtual footprints since people can still find the story by searching for the name of the production, ensemble and "live theater MTV generation."
The new law could not do that much harm if it is used for the reason shown in the MTV generation example. But removing an article because of a passing description seems a bit trivial. The law brings up some tricky questions of what has the right to be censored and what arbitrary rules Google is using to regulate the new law.
