Working With the ECJ’s Ruling In the Google “Right To Be Forgotten” Case

Alessandro Mantelero, Polytechnic University of Turin, Department of Production Systems and Business Economics; Nexa Center for Internet & Society, has published Finding a Solution to the Google’s Dilemma on the ‘Right to Be Forgotten’, after the ‘Political’ ECJ Decision. Here is the abstract.

The decision of the European Court of Justice on the Google case has re-opened the debate on the importance of remembering and forgetting in the digital age. For this reason, the decision induces to reconsider the provisions of the Article 17 of the EU Proposal for a General Data Protection Regulation. 

The future EU regulation should consider the peculiar nature of search engines and introduce an “ad hoc” legal provision, which excludes the direct enforcement of the right to erasure carried out by data controllers and requires a complaint direct to a court or data protection authority (DPA).

At the same time, this provision should also impose to data controllers the temporary removal (e.g. 20-30 days) of the links in dispute, which will be reactivated if the data subject does not take legal action within this time.

These Remarks were adapted from my contribution to the 58th Congress of the Union Internationale des Avocats, held on October 29-November 02, 2014, in Florence, Italy.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.