We're writing to highlight a decision that came out of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) earlier this week about how the "right to be de-referenced" (or "right to be forgotten") should be applied geographically. The CJEU was asked to settle questions about the scope of de-referencing orders after the French data protection authority, CNIL, fined Google for failing to de-reference information about a French national from all versions of its search engine. Google argued that it should only be required to de-reference information within the European Union, but that the information could remain on versions of the search engine outside of the EU (i.e.
google.com). The Wikimedia Foundation is concerned about the effects of de-referencing on fundamental rights like freedom of expression and access to information, and submitted a brief about these issues at both the national court and the CJEU. Now, nearly a year after the final arguments before the CJEU, the court has issued a ruling affirming Google's current practice of limiting de-referencing only to users in the European Union. While we are excited about this limitation, we are still concerned about the inequalities in information created by any geographically limited de-referencing. If you'd like more information about this decision, please check out our full write up on the Wikimedia blog:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/09/24/do-europeans-have-a-right-to-be-globally-delisted-the-court-of-justice-of-the-european-union-says-no/.
