[h=3]By DAVID ROMÁN And FRANCES ROBINSON[/h] MADRID—The European Union's highest court said on Tuesday that government agencies can't force Google Inc. to remove Web links to personal material, a landmark decision in a long battle over EU privacy laws.
The opinion by Niilo Jaaskinen, an advocate general to the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice, said search companies aren't responsible for personal data that show up in Web pages they process. He was ruling on a Spanish court's 2011 request for guidance in a case pitting Google against Spain's data-protection regulator, which had ordered the U.S. company to remove some search results that turned up the names of five Spanish residents.
Although the court action was a setback for European advocates of strict privacy guidelines for the likes of Google and social networks such as Facebook Inc., it could spur an overhaul of the EU data-protection law that the court was asked to interpret.
"It shows how important the EU's data-protection reform is," said Mina Andreeva, a spokeswoman for Viviane Reding, EU commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship. Ms. Reding is leading an effort to enshrine into EU law what advocates call a "right to be forgotten," one that would facilitate the removal of one's personal information from the Web purely on privacy grounds.
In Tuesday's opinion, Mr. Jaaskinen said current EU rules don't include the right to be forgotten, and thus offer insufficient grounds for Spain's authorities to require that Google remove links to personal information. Revamped EU rules could allow such an order in the future.
Google said in a statement that the court's opinion "supports our long-held view that requiring search engines to suppress 'legitimate and legal information' would amount to censorship."
Index on Censorship, an international organization launched in the 1970s to promote freedom of expression, also welcomed the EU court's opinion. "It would threaten freedom of expression and information if search engines providers were required to censor legitimate information that is already in the public domain," Index Chief Executive Kirsty Hughes said. "The responsibility for content should lie with the publisher not an intermediary."
The case before the EU court rested on a sample of five claimants from the 180 instances in which the Spanish data-protection regulator had instructed Google to remove access to personal information about individuals. The five said the personal information in question is basically correct, but they prefer that it not appear on Google searches.
Hugo Guidotti, a Madrid surgeon who is one of the five claimants, said he was disappointed with the EU court opinion. Mr. Guidotti has been asking that Google remove a link to a 1991 report in the Spanish newspaper El País about a malpractice lawsuit against him after an allegedly botched breast surgery. The link turns up in Google searches of his name.
Mr. Guidotti says the lingering prominence of this news report has hurt his practice and cost him clients over the years. He denies any wrongdoing and says he was found innocent of the malpractice accusation in a trial on which El País didn't report.
"This is pretty bad news for me," Mr. Guidotti said of Tuesday's action. "After all these years, this is still a problem people are asking me about."
Mr. Guidotti declined to provide documents supporting his claim, and Spanish courts say they can't retrieve any information from the two-decade-old case. A few years back he hired a new lawyer, who has no specific knowledge of the 1991 case.
The new lawyer, Gabriel Gómez, argued in the Spanish court case against Google in 2011 that the outcome of the malpractice suit was irrelevant because what's at stake is an individual's right to remove personal information he objects to, accurate or not.
During that hearing, Mr. Gómez and a representative for Spain's data-protection regulator said they hadn't asked El País to remove the article from its website out of concern that the Spanish law would protect a newspaper's right to publish—a protection that, they argued, shouldn't be extended to Google, which isn't a media organization.
Ms. Reding's bid for a new privacy law is being debated by EU member states and the European Parliament, where it has been subject to heavy lobbying from industry and privacy campaigners. There had been hopes for political agreement among member states by the start of July, but talks will now continue, probably until the end of this year at least.
The commission's proposal on the "right to be forgotten" is well-balanced and necessary in the Internet age "to give power to people to decide what information companies hold on them," said Ms. Andreeva, the spokeswoman for Ms. Reding.
"The right to be forgotten cannot be absolute just as the right to privacy is not absolute," she added. "There are other fundamental rights with which the right to be forgotten needs to be balanced—such as freedom of expression and freedom of the press."
Write to David Román at [email protected] and Frances Robinson at [email protected]
The opinion by Niilo Jaaskinen, an advocate general to the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice, said search companies aren't responsible for personal data that show up in Web pages they process. He was ruling on a Spanish court's 2011 request for guidance in a case pitting Google against Spain's data-protection regulator, which had ordered the U.S. company to remove some search results that turned up the names of five Spanish residents.
Although the court action was a setback for European advocates of strict privacy guidelines for the likes of Google and social networks such as Facebook Inc., it could spur an overhaul of the EU data-protection law that the court was asked to interpret.
"It shows how important the EU's data-protection reform is," said Mina Andreeva, a spokeswoman for Viviane Reding, EU commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship. Ms. Reding is leading an effort to enshrine into EU law what advocates call a "right to be forgotten," one that would facilitate the removal of one's personal information from the Web purely on privacy grounds.
In Tuesday's opinion, Mr. Jaaskinen said current EU rules don't include the right to be forgotten, and thus offer insufficient grounds for Spain's authorities to require that Google remove links to personal information. Revamped EU rules could allow such an order in the future.
Google said in a statement that the court's opinion "supports our long-held view that requiring search engines to suppress 'legitimate and legal information' would amount to censorship."
Index on Censorship, an international organization launched in the 1970s to promote freedom of expression, also welcomed the EU court's opinion. "It would threaten freedom of expression and information if search engines providers were required to censor legitimate information that is already in the public domain," Index Chief Executive Kirsty Hughes said. "The responsibility for content should lie with the publisher not an intermediary."
The case before the EU court rested on a sample of five claimants from the 180 instances in which the Spanish data-protection regulator had instructed Google to remove access to personal information about individuals. The five said the personal information in question is basically correct, but they prefer that it not appear on Google searches.
Hugo Guidotti, a Madrid surgeon who is one of the five claimants, said he was disappointed with the EU court opinion. Mr. Guidotti has been asking that Google remove a link to a 1991 report in the Spanish newspaper El País about a malpractice lawsuit against him after an allegedly botched breast surgery. The link turns up in Google searches of his name.
Mr. Guidotti says the lingering prominence of this news report has hurt his practice and cost him clients over the years. He denies any wrongdoing and says he was found innocent of the malpractice accusation in a trial on which El País didn't report.
"This is pretty bad news for me," Mr. Guidotti said of Tuesday's action. "After all these years, this is still a problem people are asking me about."
Mr. Guidotti declined to provide documents supporting his claim, and Spanish courts say they can't retrieve any information from the two-decade-old case. A few years back he hired a new lawyer, who has no specific knowledge of the 1991 case.
The new lawyer, Gabriel Gómez, argued in the Spanish court case against Google in 2011 that the outcome of the malpractice suit was irrelevant because what's at stake is an individual's right to remove personal information he objects to, accurate or not.
During that hearing, Mr. Gómez and a representative for Spain's data-protection regulator said they hadn't asked El País to remove the article from its website out of concern that the Spanish law would protect a newspaper's right to publish—a protection that, they argued, shouldn't be extended to Google, which isn't a media organization.
Ms. Reding's bid for a new privacy law is being debated by EU member states and the European Parliament, where it has been subject to heavy lobbying from industry and privacy campaigners. There had been hopes for political agreement among member states by the start of July, but talks will now continue, probably until the end of this year at least.
The commission's proposal on the "right to be forgotten" is well-balanced and necessary in the Internet age "to give power to people to decide what information companies hold on them," said Ms. Andreeva, the spokeswoman for Ms. Reding.
"The right to be forgotten cannot be absolute just as the right to privacy is not absolute," she added. "There are other fundamental rights with which the right to be forgotten needs to be balanced—such as freedom of expression and freedom of the press."
Write to David Román at [email protected] and Frances Robinson at [email protected]