PARIS—Google Inc. is appealing a French data-protection order to
expand Europe's right to be forgotten to its websites world-wide,
kicking off a legal tussle over the territorial scope of a rule
established last year by the European Union's top court.
The Mountain View, Calif., company said Thursday it sent a
request to France's Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des
Liberté s, or CNIL, asking it to rescind a May orderâ "disclosed
publicly in June that would force Google to apply Europe's right to
be forgotten to "all domain names" of the search engine, including
google.com, not just Google sites aimed at Europe, like
google.co.uk.
Established just over a year ago by the EU's Court of Justice,
the right to be forgotten gives European residents the ability to
demand that search engines remove links that appear in searches for
an individual's name. Google has so far removed more than 1 million
links under the ruling but has insisted on only doing so for its EU
websites.
"We believe that no one country should have the authority to
control what content someone in a second country can access," Peter
Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, wrote in a statement
provided by a spokesman Thursday. "We respectfully disagree with
the CNIL's assertion of global authority on this issue."
The CNIL and some other European regulators have assailed the
company's strategy, arguing the ruling says nothing about applying
only to European domain names. They say Google's approach makes it
easy to find private information that individuals had wanted
removed by searching its non-European sites.
The CNIL indicated Thursday that it is prepared to defend its
order. "There is no effectiveness if the right is applied only in
Europe," a CNIL spokeswoman said.
The CNIL had initially given Google 15 days to comply with the
order but had later extended the deadline to the end of the month.
If Google doesn't comply, the CNIL can open sanctions proceedings
that could lead to a fine of up to €150,000.
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com
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