By Sam Schechner
BRUSSELS--A top Google Inc. executive Wednesday defended the
search company's application of Europe's nascent "right to be
forgotten," just days before European Union regulators plan to
release their own guidelines on how--and where--to apply the May
court ruling that established the new right.
The ruling requires search engines, notably Google, to allow
individuals to request the removal of some results from Web
searches for their names.
Speaking at a privacy conference in Brussels, Google's Global
Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer defended the company's decision to
apply the decision from the European Court of Justice only to the
European versions of its websites, such as google.be or google.fr,
but not to its global site, google.com even when that site is
accessed within Europe.
"Other courts in other parts of the world would never have
reached the result that the European Court of Justice reached," Mr.
Fleischer said.
"Countries have different rules, different laws, and that is the
way to respect them," he said.
Mr. Fleisher's defense comes as EU privacy regulators are coming
close to issuing new guidelines that are expected to tackle the
controversial question of the "territoriality" of the court
decision. Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, chairman of the pan-European
body that groups together national privacy regulators, said on
Wednesday that those guidelines would be decided at meetings next
week.
After months of debate, EU data-protection regulators are also
likely to tackle other hot-button issues, such as whether Google
and other search engines should be allowed to notify websites when
it agrees to remove one of their pages from the results for an
individual's name. Those notifications, which have allowed
publications including The Wall Street Journal to unmask some
people claiming the right to be forgotten, have come in for
criticism from regulators.
"What we want is a harmonized application within Europe," Ms.
Falque-Pierrotin said on Wednesday at the same conference. "We want
the data subjects wherever they are, to benefit from the same
protection.
Also speaking on the same panel as Mr. Fleischer was Joaquín
Muñoz Rodríguez, a lawyer for Mario Costeja González, who
complained after Google results displayed links to a 1998 newspaper
advertisement that mentioned a long-resolved debt. Mr. Muñoz said
he was pleased with the result of the court decision, even though
it has had the effect of turning his client into a public
figure--who would be exempt from the right to be forgotten under
the ruling.
"The paradox is that Mr. Costeja is better known than before,"
Mr. Muñoz said.
Mr. Fleischer, for his part, gave his legal adversary his
due.
"Dude, from lawyer to lawyer, you won."
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com
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