Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Recent EU privacy ruling - effect on search engine operations

Europe's top court ruled that Google Inc. can be forced to erase links to content about individuals on the Web, a surprise decision that could disrupt search-engine operators and shift the balance between online privacy and free speech across Europe.

Individuals can request that search engines remove links to news articles, court judgments and other documents in search results for their name. National authorities can force the search engines to comply if they judge there isn't a sufficient public interest in the information, the court ruled.
The ruling could lead to a massive wave of takedown requests that would swamp companies and privacy regulators with legal costs, while whitewashing the public record. Also it will not help the analysts or any other firm who wanted to make a living by using data crawled from internet , analyze and present in consumable format as many data will not be available now.

No comments:

Post a Comment