Must remove links to stories about removing links
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) orders Google to remove nine links from its search results that point to news stories reporting on earlier removals of links from its search results. The links relate to a criminal offence that were removed by Google following a request from the individual concerned. According to the ICO, Google argued the articles were an essential part of a recent news story relating to a matter of significant public importance. Despite the ICo recognizing recognises that journalistic content relating to decisions to delist search results may be newsworthy and in the public interest they say the news stories have “an unwarranted and negative impact on the individual’s privacy and is a breach of the Data Protection Act,” and that they must be removed. Google has 35 days to comply.
Google appeal on Oracle suit denied
The Court denies a Google appeal that sought to stop a billion-dollar Oracle lawsuit by seeking limits on software copyright protections. The justices decline to disturb an appeals court ruling in Oracle’s favor that reinvigorated the company’s case against Google. 37 packages of prewritten Java programs, known as application programming interfaces, are entitled to copyright protection. Google:
We will continue to defend the interoperability that has fostered innovation and competition in the software industry.
Oracle:
[The result] is a win for innovation and for the technology industry that relies on copyright protection to fuel innovation.
Blogger fined for Google placement
A French court rules that food critic Caroline Doudet must pay a fine of €1,500 ($2,000) because her negative review of a restaurant is too high on the Google search results and may affect business. She also must rename her post, The Place to Avoid in Cap-Ferret: Il Giardino, to something that is less likely to drive business away from the restaurant. The owner acknowledges that the complaints in the blog are possibly true but says her post causes unwarranted harm:
Maybe there were some errors in the service, that happens sometimes in the middle of August – I recognise that. But this article showed in the Google search results and did my business more and more harm, even though we have worked seven days a week for 15 years. I could not accept that.
‘Right to be forgotten’ begins
Google begins processing requests for search result removals because of a European Union court ruling that people have a “right to be forgotten” on the internet. They have over 41,000 requests to remove individually:
This week, we’re starting to take action on the removals requests that we’ve received. This is a new process for us. Each request has to be assessed individually, and we’re working as quickly as possible to get through the queue.