Google rejects French order on world ‘right to be forgotten’

However, it is only implemented on European domains, like Google.co.uk and Google.fr – visitors to Google.com and other global versions of the site will see the full, uncensored results.

Google Inc. (GOOGL,GOOG) is resisting against France’s data protection regulator, after the watchdog ordered the company to extend the so-called “right to be forgotten” to its websites globally.

The right to be forgotten or “le droit d’oubli” – “the right to oblivion” – as the French name it allows a user to ask Google to de-list some compromising or defamatory links linked to its personal life from search results.

According to the act, data which can include… (The web pages themselves are not removed.) Google has approved around 1 million requests since its introduction.

Delisting the content under the parameters of “the right to be forgotten” does not mean the information is taken down from the Internet, but that it’s no longer readily available to the public through a simple search on an intermediary such as Google. The company also argued that no state has the right to censor the information residents in another state can access and deemed France’s demand “a troubling development that risks serious chilling effects on the Web”.

The firm cited several national examples: Turkey criminalizes some criticisms of Kemal Ataturk; Thailand does the same for its royalty; and Russians are banned from disseminating “gay propaganda” online.

He said Google has asked the CNIL to withdraw its formal notice.

The Wikipedia information website has described the European ruling as creating “memory holes” in the Internet, while critics of the US Internet giant have said such standards are necessary to protect the privacy of citizens. Other search engines, including Microsoft’s Bing service, also must comply with the decision. “In the end, the internet would only be as free as the world’s least free place”, says Fleischer. It gave Google 15 days to begin complying.

The CNIL said it would examine Google’s appeal and decide whether to accept it in two months.

The links, however, would still appear if the search was conducted in other versions of Google, such as google.com.

On Thursday, Google requested that CNIL remove the order and saying it disagrees with the watchdog’s stance.

In a blog post on Thursday, Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel, said no one country should have the authority to control the content someone in a second country can access.

He admitted that Google had made mistakes in the past, and said that “as far as Europe is concerned: We get it. We understand that people here are not the same in their attitudes to everything as people in America”.