Google Restores Some Links To Articles Removed In 'Right To Be Forgotten' Mess (original) (raw)

from the so-how's-this-work-now? dept

Last week, of course, there was a lot of attention around Google alerting publications that some of their stories had been removed from its index over “right to be forgotten” requests, following a dangerous European Court of Justice ruling. Various publications in the UK complained about some of the removals, and requested if there was any sort of appeals process. The BBC was initially told that there was no such process, though the Guardian claimed it was looking for ways to appeal.

It appears that the current “appeals” process is based on how much attention and ridiculousness happen in response to the revelations. Because late last week, Google restored some of the links for the Guardian (mainly the ones where the removals made no sense at all).

Either way, this has now created quite a mess, which was easily predictable as soon as the court’s ruling came down. How anyone can think a somewhat arbitrary censorship mechanism would function smoothly is beyond me.

Filed Under: appeals, bbc, europe, free speech, guardian, links, right to be forgotten
Companies: google