By now, most of you are probably familiar with this ECJ ruling:
Internet companies can be made to remove irrelevant or excessive personal information from search engine results, Europe's top court ruled on Tuesday in a case pitting privacy campaigners against Google.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) upheld the complaint of a Spanish man who objected to the fact that Google searches on his name threw up links to a 1998 newspaper article about the repossession of his home.
No doubt Google is frustrated with this result. It creates big hassles for it in dealing with the EU market, and could lead to bigger hassles if this notion spreads to other jurisdictions. Here's Google's take:
Sources at the world's biggest search company say they are yet to figure out how to deal with the expected flood of expected requests and will need to build up an "army of removal experts" in each of the 28 European Union countries, including those where Google does not have operations.
Whether those experts merely remove controversial links or actually judge the merits of individual takedown requests are among the many questions Google has yet to figure out, added the source.
Extra burdens, and differing rules across jurisdictions, could be characterized as a "trade barrier." Will Google make that argument here, perhaps raising it in the TTIP context?
Are we OK with different speech/privacy balances in different jurisdictions, even if that is not the most efficient outcome?
