French Regulator Rejects Google Appeal on Scope of 'Right to Be Forgotten' -- Update
21 September 2015 - 9:30PM
Dow Jones News
By Sam Schechner
PARIS--France's data-protection regulator on Monday rejected
Google Inc.'s appeal of its order to expand Europe's "right to be
forgotten" to Google's websites world-wide, setting up what is
likely to be an extended legal battle.
France's Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés,
or CNIL, said that Google must now adhere to a formal order in May
directing it to apply Europe's right to be forgotten to "all domain
names" of the search engine, including google.com--or face possible
sanctions proceedings.
Established just over a year ago by the European Union's Court
of Justice, the right to be forgotten gives European residents the
ability to request that search engines remove links that appear in
searches for their own name. Google has applied the ruling, but
insisted on only removing results from European domain names, such
as google.fr, not from google.com.
Google on Monday reiterated that it doesn't believe the French
regulator has the authority to expand the scope of the rule. "As a
matter of principle we respectfully disagree with the idea that one
national data protection authority can assert global authority to
control the content that people can access around the world," a
spokesman said.
Both sides are fighting to set a precedent. The CNIL can only
issue initial fines of up to EUR150,000 ($165,000)--a relatively
small penalty compared with Google's annual revenue of about $66
billion. But any sanction can be appealed in French court, and
possibly referred back to the European level to establish how
broadly the new rule applies.
In its July appeal directly to the French regulator, Google
argued that applying the right beyond Europe could open the door to
more authoritarian governments attempting to apply Internet
censorship rules beyond their borders.
In its rejection Monday, the CNIL said that it wasn't seeking
extraterritorial application of the law, but simply application of
European law by companies doing business in Europe.
The CNIL and some other European regulators have said that
Google's approach makes it easy to find private information that
individuals have wanted to be removed by searching its non-European
sites, undermining the ruling's effectiveness in Europe.
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 21, 2015 07:15 ET (11:15 GMT)
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