Facebook To Investigate EU "Right to be Forgotten"

[engine]

Another major business, Facebook, has to investigate the EU's "Right to be Forgotten" ruling.

As soon news went into its news feed there's likely to be links and data out there that may fall foul of the EU ruling.

Facebook Inc. has been drawn into the debate over the “right to be forgotten” as the social networking site will meet with a German data protection regulator to discuss jurisdictional issues raised by a European court ruling.

The ruling, in addition to creating the ability for individuals to seek the deletion of links to personal data, gives national data regulators more authority over companies based outside their borders, said Johannes Caspar, head of the data protection office in Hamburg. Facebook will meet to discuss the ruling by the European Court of Justice as soon as next month, he said.Facebook To Investigate EU "Right to be Forgotten" [bloomberg.com]

[Samizdata]

“Facebook tried to find a way to escape national regulators and succeeded in that for a while,” Caspar said in a phone interview. “But the European Court of Justice’s ruling on Google in May made it clear that the national regulation on data protection is applicable whenever an Internet provider has an active unit in that country.”

English is probably not Herr Caspar's first language.

The ruling spoke of a "provider of content", not an "Internet provider".

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