Google's 'right to be forgotten' shouldn’t go beyond EU: council

PanARMENIAN.Net - Google's advisory council has decided that the 'right to be forgotten' ruling should not go beyond the EU.

As Digital Spy reports citing TNW, the internet giant set up an eight-person committee back in May to look into demands for a global roll-out of the rule.

At present, only citizens of EU countries can apply to have anything related to them removed from the search engine's European domains.

Regulators have been pushing to get Google to apply the rule globally, but the majority of the committee has spoken against such calls in a new 44-page report.

Among the those on the committee is Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who argued: "I completely oppose the legal situation in which a commercial company is forced to become the judge of our most fundamental rights of expression and privacy, without allowing any appropriate procedure for appeal by publishers whose works are being suppressed."

Not everyone agreed however, with former German federal Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger saying: "The internet is global, the protection of the user's rights must also be global. Any circumvention of these rights must be prevented."

The report also points out that committee members were only paid expenses and had no contractual or non-disclosure agreements with Google.