THE RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN

[Ashith]

Key decisions about the balance of privacy and free expression still remain to be settled by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Although the ECJ’s two decisions generally support the rights of those searching the web to access links to information, both show the tremendous weight European law gives to privacy as a human right that is given the strongest consideration before it is limited. Even though the court found that European law does not mandate global delisting when the Right to Be Forgotten is asserted, it indicated that a data protection authority could seek global delisting if the privacy balance called for it in a specific circumstance.

The court also made clear that within Europe there can be national variances in how the Right to Be Forgotten can be applied, given differences in local law and culture.

In a second case also decided today, the court avoided banning in advance listing of results that include political, racial or other sensitive information. It did require heightened consideration for those results, to the extent that it even required that pages containing information about criminal histories include relevant context on the search page, when the affected party objects to the result

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