France told to stay in its lane over ‘right to be forgotten’

Google has won a landmark case against French regulator Commission nationale de L’informatique et des libertés (CNIL) over the ‘right to be forgotten’ rules.

After being fined €100,000 for refusing to de-reference certain references in markets outside of the CNIL jurisdiction, Google took the regulator to the Court of Justice of the European Union. And Europe’s top court agreed with the search giant.

“The operator of a search engine is not required to carry out a de-referencing on all versions of its search engine,” the court ruling states.

“It is, however, required to carry out that de-referencing on the versions corresponding to all the Member States and to put in place measures discouraging internet users from gaining access, from one of the Member States, to the links in question which appear on versions of that search engine outside the EU.”

In short, Google must de-reference inside the European Union, while also preventing internet users inside the bloc from accessing de-referenced content which is hosted elsewhere. Preventing those inside the European Union from seeing de-referenced content on versions of the search engine outside of the bloc will be complicated, there is always a workaround if you know what you are doing, however it is a win for Google.

For the CNIL, this is a humbling ruling however. The regulator has effectively been told to stick to its job and not try to force its will upon companies where it has no right to. And we whole-heartedly agree.

The French regulator has no right to impose its own rules on Google when it is operating in other sovereign nation states.

This case dates back to 2015 when the idea of ‘right to be forgotten’ was forced upon Google. In France, and generally across Europe, an individual or company can request Google de-reference search results which are damaging or false. This does not give individuals freedom to remove any reference to them which they don’t like, but it does allow for the removal of false information. These are reasonable rules.

In reaction to the rules, Google geo-fenced internet users in the European Union, but refused to de-reference information on versions of the search engine outside the bloc. This is a reasonable response and course of action.

This is what the French regulator had an issue with, though it has quite rightly been told to stay within its remit. This is a reasonable judgement.

What the French regulator was trying to do was wrong and would have set a damaging precedent. No government or regulator should be allowed to apply its own rules outside its border. The European Union is a tricky situation, as rules can be extended to member states, though there is a hard border at the edge of the bloc.

Thankfully the Court of Justice of the European Union has applied logic to the situation.