Google has lost a “right to be forgotten” case filed in a UK court by a businessman who sought the search giant to remove the links to the crime he committed and the sentence he served from the search results. However, in a separate but similar case, the court rejected the plea of another businessman.
The losing claimant, referred to only as NT1 for legal reasons, was convicted of conspiracy to account falsely in the late 1990 and was jailed for four years, whereas, the claimant who won, known as NT2, was convicted more than a decade ago of conspiracy to intercept communications and was imprisoned for just six months, reported The Guardian.
Google had refused both businessmen’s demand to remove links to their convictions from search results like web pages published by a national newspaper and other media. Consequently, they dragged the internet behemoth to the court.
The judge ruling in favour of NT said that the claimant had shown remorse for his actions in the past, while the second claimant continues to mislead the public.
The judge also took into account the fact that NT2’s conviction did not concern directly to the “consumers, customers or investors”, but rather in relation to the invasion of privacy of third parties.
He also added that the crime and punishment information in case of NT2 has become out of date, and hence is irrelevant and of no sufficient legitimate interest to users of Google search, therefore not warranted to be on a search result page.
In case of NT1, however, the judge said, “He has not accepted his guilt, has misled the public and this court, and shows no remorse over any of these matters.”
“He remains in business, and the information serves the purpose of minimising the risk that he will continue to mislead, as he has in the past. Delisting would not erase the information from the record altogether, but it would make it much harder to find.”
Both the judgments, especially one that was won by the claimant will lead a flurry of new court cases and have a wide-reaching influence.
Since the European court of justice ruling in 2014 which directed Google to erase “irrelevant” and outdated data on request, the California-based company has received requests to remove at least 2.4m links from search results. Google has the right to reject which it thinks are in public interest.
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