(note any comments here are entirely my own personal opinion)
On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 11:23 AM, Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The ECJ said the
right "to be forgotten" applies when the data aggregated "appear to be
inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation
to the purpose for which they were processed and in light of the time
that has elapsed."
That begs the question as to what is "the purpose for which they were
processed". Even in this case with Google and the Spanish guy and some old
repossession: What's the purpose of Google's processing the data? To
satisfy search requests. Is the old repossession relevant to the search for
the guy's name? It depends on why someone is doing the searching, maybe it
is and maybe it isn't.
And is Google having to remove all record of the repossession from their
index, or just in connection with the guy's name? What if someone searches
for "Mario Costeja González repossession", is the old repossession relevant
then? What about "Mario Costeja González 1998", since the repossession
occurred in 1998? How many years until he can whine at Google that the top
results for "Mario Costeja González" are now all about this stupid lawsuit?
What if it had been some other Mario Costeja González (maybe one living
outside Europe) who had the repossession? Would the ECJ ruling still
require Google to remove the information based on the complaint by *this*
Mario Costeja González?