The law of the "right to be forgotten".

political analyst

In an article published in the Indo yesterday, legal affairs editor Shane Phelan wrote that Google has been criticised for accepting requests that were made by convicted brothel-keeper Thomas Carroll under the EU law of the "right to be forgotten" for the delisting of at least 6 newspaper articles relating to Carroll's and his associates' activities. Google said it had no comment to make on the delisting decisions, the most recent of which was made on 5 April, or the delisting last month of an article relating to the 2019 conviction of a Dublin man for possession of indecent images of children, an offence for which he wasn't jailed but he's still a registered sex offender.

Articles relating to another convicted brothel-keeper, Mark McCormick, were delisted in 2021 and earlier last year but Google reversed its decision to delist the most recent of the articles relating to McCormick when the Indo queried the reasons. However, a formal complaint filed by the Indo last month about the decision to delist one of the O'Carroll articles elicited no response from Google.

Apart from the making of a complaint to Google, can the media take legal action to challenge the delisting of articles?

Peregrinus

It's a great question.

It'd be a novel action, I think. There's no contractual relationship between Independent Newspapers and Google, and it's hard to argue that anyone who creates a webpage automatically acquires an enforceable right to have it indexed and linked to by Google, or by search engines generally. I think at the very least you'd need additional facts — e.g. that Google's action in delisting your webpage had an improper purpose, was part of a campaign directed against you, was an improper attempt by Google to obtain commercial advantage at your expense, something like that. Somebody with a better knowledge of competition law than I have might be able to construct an argument that Google's action in delisting a page was an abuse of Google's dominant position, but it looks like a bit of a stretch and I think it would be very fact-and-context dependent.

cml387

Is the fact the Google have delisted those pages a big issue. After all, it would drive people to subscribe to the paper's own archive (which would be generating revenue for the paper).

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120476527#Comment_120476527

No it would not have driven subscrptions: if people cannot find the articles, nothing will prompt them to subscribe.

The right to be forgotten should not apply to criminal convictios for serious offences, surely.

cml387

I don't see the issue, if you look at how things used to be. Before the internet there was no real way for a civilian of finding out criminal convictions without trawling though newspaper morgues, and even then it was a hit and miss affair.

Then Google came along and provide the service for free. But Google have no obligation to be the memory of the nation.

On the other hand the newspaper (well, The Irish Times) have put their entire archive online which, for a relatively small fee, you can subscribe to and search.

L1011

As an aside, Indo Group archives are, with some gaps, available on the Irish Newspaper Archives albeit the search is very very poor for non-dictionary words (surnames, some street names - due to these not having been in the correction dictionary when it was scanned and OCRed). This includes the Press, which they bought the archive of.

INA also has loads of other stuff including the Examiner - which the Irish Times owns - but not the Irish Times!

I used the INA (I have a sub anyway, its a bit dear to do this on a whim or for an obsession) to check that I wasn't imagining that someone local to me had been convicted for assault. I was fairly sure I'd read it on the Indo at the time but it had vanished from any search engine at all. They had indeed been convicted.

Hotblack Desiato

This 'right to be forgotten' is the stupidest thing ever.

AFAIK it's as easy to get around as using google.com rather than google.ie - and it's not as if other search engines aren't available.

As pointed out this doesn't affect the websites of media outlets themselves and it's not as if we have so many that searching all the main ones is at all onerous.

I do find it deliciously ironic that by the media publishing articles about these requests, the requestor is if anything associating their name more strongly with the thing they'd rather we didn't know about 😁

Nonetheless I do not believe that this 'right' is in the public interest.

Peregrinus

I think it does make a difference. Anybody who is determined to track down the truth about Peregrinus and that business with the bishop and the goat can do so without difficulty, but the casual googler isn't going to stumble across the story. And that could make a big difference to Peregrinus.

3DataModem

The right to be forgotten is very powerful. I know two people who used it after being involved in legal action pertaining to their jobs, and it has really helped their lives afterward, as so many companies use simple web-scrapers as background checks when hiring or doing business.