Japan court recognizes ‘right to be forgotten’ in suit against Google

[bill]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/02/27/national/crime-legal/japanese-court-recognizes-right-to-be-forgotten-in-suit-against-google/ [japantimes.co.jp]

Japanese court recognizes ‘right to be forgotten’ in suit against Google

A court in Saitama has recognized the “right to be forgotten” — the first ruling of its kind in Japan — in a case filed by a man demanding Google Inc. remove three-year-old news reports of his arrest in connection to child prostitution and pornography, according to newly discovered court documents.

[tangor]

Before the net and google and other search engines, these kinds of things would fall off the "public radar" over time and folks could get on with their lives. In that regard I can certainly see how and why some would be very interested in having that past light turned off, particularly if they were innocent ... and most reporting services rarely reveal that info, they've moved on to the next "horror" story and never followup with the charges being dropped or the person found innocent.

Then again, I don't like the concept of censorship as the original reporting was done in good faith (usually) and in the public interest.

Something other than censorship would be ideal, ie. for each related report a person does not like there is a report that shows justice was served and BOTH are returned for any single search... but that is a nightmare of coding and database use so I do not know what the answer might be.

I do know, however, that if this genie is let out of the bottle the web will become a very much different place, one where history can be rewritten by whoever ... and whenever.

[bill]

I don't envy the SERP providers who end up having to deal with all of this. Monitoring and maintaining these sorts of compliance systems must be quite a burden.Complying with one order should be simple enough, but in the EU with all of the requests they must filter through must be quite a challenge. I wonder if this ruling will force Google Japan to setup a similar system.

The other side of the coin is the argument that such information shouldn't be censored, particularly in this case where the guy was found guilty of some fairly nasty stuff. I wouldn't want to hire someone convicted of these sort of charges regardless of their right to be rehabilitated.

[engine]

Is this the equivalent of pre-Internet when the news would eventually becom forgotten about?

I agree, tangor, the publications often dont follow up when they get it wrong, or the charges are proved false.

The stories arei still there, not censored, so they can be found, but much harder for the general audience to find it.

I wonder if the right to be forgotten will end up being rolled out into many more regions.

[bill]

I get the feeling that this guy might have a hard time SEOing his name out of the SERPs given all the news sites with good PR that covered this. It makes you wonder whether the sites that list this information should have more responsibility in this matter. Google just searches and lists content.