Google’s advisory council says keep ‘right to be forgotten’ in EU

An advisory council has decided that the European ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling should only be applied in the European Union.

This is in response to previous calls from regulators who hoped that the rule would be applied globally across all of Google’s markets.

Google decided to form a committee of eight individuals back in May to discern whether the regulators’ demands were justified.

Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales was amongst the council that has now opted to snub regulator calls, as reported by TNW.

“I completely oppose the legal situation in which a commercial company is forced to become the judge of our most fundamental rights of expression and privacy, without allowing any appropriate procedure for appeal by publishers whose works are being suppressed,” wrote Wales.

Google has also been keen to point out that the council was only paid expenses, and has no contractual or non-disclosure agreements with the search engine giant.

The ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling came into effect last year, and forced Google to remove search engine results that contained personal information.

Users were allowed to submit requests to the California-based company asking for results to be taken down, although it has only been applied to European domains thus far.

Related: Google strikes deal with Twitter for more searchable tweets

The council issued a 44-page report today, with the majority conclusion being that Google’s position against a global RtbF rollout should be backed.

Not all agreed with the support however, with council member and former German federal Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger arguing that: “The internet is global, the protection of the user’s rights must also be global.”

“Any circumvention of these rights must be prevented.”