Following the controversial ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling in Europe this week, Google has received new takedown requests, according to a news report.
The BBC reports that the search giant has received requests from an ex-politician seeking re-election has asked to have links to an article about his behaviour in office removed.
A man convicted of possessing child abuse images has requested links to pages about his conviction to be wiped and a doctor wants negative reviews from patients removed from the results, the BBC reports.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has joined a number of detractors questioning an EU ruling which was made this week regarding Google search results, with the founder of Wikipedia calling the court’s verdict “astonishing”.
He added that the court’s ruling “should send chills down the spine of everyone in the European Union who believes in the crucial importance of free expression and freedom of information”.
Wales said: “If you really dig into it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. They’re asking Google… you can complain about something and just say it’s irrelevant, and Google has to make some kind of a determination about that. That’s a very hard and difficult thing for Google to do – particularly if it’s at risk of being held legally liable if it gets it wrong in some way.”
He continued: “Normally we would think whoever is publishing the information, they have the primary responsibility – Google just helps us to find the things that are online.”
Wales concluded of the ruling: “I suspect this isn’t going to stand for very long.”
