(note any comments here are entirely my own personal opinion)
On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 11:23 AM, Mike Godwin mnemonic@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?