Interesting! As a person I believe in making things open for all which allows transparency and people can make there own judgments.

However, in my field of research, perhaps, I will not encounter any difficulties.

@Riaz, I very much hope that you (and all other responsible fellows, including myself) won't face any problems. But there can be the situation where someone posts evil messages about your work for whatever reasons. In the past this was only possible on a local level. Nowadays, it's a click away after fabricating any accusations - and in most cases it's searchable worldwide as well. Forever?

Like Michael,

I have some problems to define, whats relevant or not. It will be very difficult without clear guidelines. But on the other hand, it´s impossible, that all the world can read your former faults, errors or fates. So let the services think, they earn a lot of money with their machines.

In RG I´m not so anxious, because if you open your data, you do it freely and self determined. If you don´t want to be public, just keep your sensible data retained.

Dear Michael,

I have got the same trouble like Hanno has had. I cannot interpret what may be "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" data. I cannot fancy how they will select them but I am afraid when bureaucracy start to implement something, the outputs may be too complicated and foreign from the normal way. Unfortunately, the ideas without imagination of a clerk or a lawyer are difficult to forecast.

Dear Hanno,

Let us see only the articles which were put on RG without the permission of the publishers.

@Brückner, as I said "own judgment" is important.

Hanno Krieger explained nicely I think.

@András Bozsik, you have raised a very important as well as interesting example. But I think lot depends on yourself, perhaps on your understanding what to do and what to not. Recently one of my students published full text of her article in RG. The publisher was Informa and it was not an open access article. I explained and she got it right. So, your conscious matters.

Regards.

I think the court is trying on raising privacy isues regarding boardless and easy way to find out negatif isues on someone from irrelevant data. As @andras said if the court applied that it suppose to define detailed on inadequate,irrelevant or no longer relevant data.

As web/data miner and data scientiest this kind of boundary will restrict and reduce dataset and probability of hidden gold data for future usage in my research. As it said irrelevant and inadadaquate or junk data now maybe a valuable data in the future. As a psikoanalytic behavior research it reduce dataset to observe human behavior perceptive an opinion over marketing,economic,political, science and other area.

I have done work in computer forensics and the cases that I have seen on harassment, computer hacking and criminal cases due to the level of information available is sad.

Most people do not realize it, but the level of information that people can put up for you can be dangerous and in some cases could be life threatening (in most cases that I have seen the person was not responsible for the information but a third party was involved).

Most academics think of freedom of information as a necessity and have not seen the damage of such information 'freedom' on the personal lives of those whose livelihood have been ruined. While I do favor transparency, it is not a black and white issue but layers of grey.

I for one think this is a step in the right direction.

Dony Saputra has an excellent point.

The topic is very interesting and the discussion is vivid at the moment . I don't really think ithe problem will influence my work but the time will show how it works and only then I'll have the right to assess whtether it works for me or against me.

Dear Michael et al., I think that we ourselves should be responsible that the info we give is both correct and that it will not come back to haunt us, as things that we should not do, or should not have done.

Then I ask, Do you want all the GOOD WORK, all the HARD WORK that you have done to be forgotten?

An important result and it will be interesting to see how Google addresses it. Of note the online information at this stage can only be altered following a direct formal request that is made to Google.

It would be useful if some of the assorted information that tends to 'clutter' Google searches could be corralled and rendered 'less important'.

Dear All,

Regulations may be as strict as possible if somebody is not careful sufficiently regarding his/her own personnel data. The most important thing is to be cautious even suspicious!

In addition, we can discuss this issue but we cannot decide!

Dear all,

I append the english text for the EuGH decision

Thanks, Hanno, for the link. From this you can see that it's not about your individual care about disguising your life stories or your personal data but the efforts of third parties to talk about you in the Web. If there is inappropriate damaging of your identity on the Web, services can be forced to withdraw the search results. But: the data itself is still on the Web, so it's not deleted - only the access is made more difficult. Therefore, any suggestions that data might be hidden from being researched are unfounded.

Nice question. Let's make the devil's advocate:

It is a common practice if you want to discredit somebody (say X) to hire an army of 'volunteers' that will search in google search engine with phrases like:

" X stupid", "X horn", "X idiot", "X ...(self censored)

Then, due to the way that machine works, when X try to put his/her name in google search he/she will find as a second autocompleted the suggestions:

X {stupid} etc, while the second word is in gray scale.

So, tell me now? Should the individual X not have the right to demand from google removing all those insults?

Dear Michael,

I have no practicable idea how to manage this deleting job. In the decision it´s stated, that you can claim that your data shall be deleted. Details??

I´ve just heard that Google is preparing a procedure to ask for deleting. I´m really curious, if they do a good job.

Knowledge should be writenn in net. Only personal data should not!

Dear Costas,

in principle you are right. But could you explain, if the information about some ones insolvency is no knowledge. Just imagine I want to help you with a credit.

You see it clearly depends from the personal interest.

PS1: Exact this case was the reason for the EU decision.

PS2: I think the google behaviour for a former problem is very impossible, because it states errors and faults from past and keeps the improved situation out of the horizon.

Speaking in terms of knowledge by means of papers, discussions, dictionaries, books, e-books..., that are available on internet, I do share @Costas's opinion! The EU Court's decision will impact not only Google, but also all other search engines. Yes, it will have a big impact on our work, both teaching and researching! Our interactions will suffer!

Have You read this 5 key questions about the European Court of Justice’s Google decision?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/05/14/five-key-questions-about-the-european-court-of-justices-google-decision/

Hanno,

personal information might be, where you want to be, and not available to anybody. Let me give you an example. As academics, we usually have posted a lot of personal information. But essentially it is almost harmful. I may accept that there are two types of personal information: One that can be harmful and another that it is not harmful. The not harmful information can be at net!

Dear Costas,

that´s a little bit to optimistic.

Academics are no special kind of men. They suffer from misused informations as all other humans. The google infos were not on the net because the causor wanted it, they were posent on IT without permission of the affected person. Please don´t confuse the high RG level with the low commercial level of other IT services.

How does wiping out memory actually work? So many of us have experienced accidentally deleting pictures on a camera or emptying our garbage bins--only to discover that there are all kinds of means to recover data.

Can someone explain what are the capabilities we have currently to permanently delete data?

Kevin, it's not about deleting the data actually. It's about not showing them in the search results, which means the data are very hard to find on the Web (but not impossible). It's like someone being forgotten by his ex-partner, who still has some pictures and letters somewhere in the attic.

Google like search engines should make some catogories like academic relavent results, sports relavent results seperately as how they did like google scholar. So they can avoid showing the irrelavent results on top of the lists.

I read your proposals, dear Michael and Vijayakumar, but I´ve big problems, that not to show in special circumstances will prevent the misuse of data. You must get the right to be deleted resp. your data.

Dear Hanno, my comment (two days ago) was not a proposal rather a statement of a fact. Deleting data on the Web is nearly impossible due to the existence of such services as the Wayback Machine (https://archive.org/), which archives Web presentations. Consequently, we had to approach all these services to remove their copies of Web sites and information if we wanted to be sure the data are gone completely.

I think it's easier to disguise the data, though I admit it's less effective.

Dear Michael,

I´m convinced of your statement, it´s impossible to delete data on the net. But if some organisation has "old" data, this organisation should no more show these infos as connected with the name of the related person. Of course, if you do targeted search, you will eventuelly discover these data again somewhere .

I think it's still early to tell if this law will actually work in improving online reputations. My concern is that it places a huge burden on search engines. Not only do they have to invest tons of money to compliance, but now they will be opened up to law suits as well. If people didn't do so much stupid stuff, they could keep their dirt off the internet fairly easily in my view. If search engines are having to invest all their time and resources into compliance and law suits, they won't be able to innovate nearly as quickly. It's unfortunate.

Aaron, on the one hand I agree with your view but on the other hand it's also a fact that Web users can throw dirt on you publicly. Certainly you don't want this to show up endlessly as top result, especially if it's wrong and disreputable.

Many search engines make a lot of money with our data, even if we are careful and nice. I think they have the obligation to handle our data responsibly.

Regarding the practical side of this question I provide the link below, at which Google users can apply. That's good news for all of you who have backed the need for a solution.

https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=websearch#

Dear Michael,

I´m really interested, if this will work. Understanding that you give some more infos to the net like reasons, all the urls, lawer...without knowing, where this data disapear.

Hm??

Many (hopefully most) of us live in a society, where information is accessible in some way, whether it benefits the government or not. From a recent report I've learned that you cannot get any information on the Web about the Tiananmen Square protests (1989) if you use the Internet in mainland China. Can anybody confirm this? Is this a 'special case' in Google algorithms?

If confirmed this would, of course, not be advancement of information rights but pure censorship.

Dear @Michael, I think that pure censorhip is what we talk about regarding information on the Web about the Tiananmen Square protests, not the algorithm at all!

I think, this cannot be done manually, rather it's only possible by using filters - some sort of manipulating the algorithm. And it is censorship, you're right! There's no the right to be forgotten in this case, of course.

I have just remembered about the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests and massacre!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/tiananmen-square-massacre-remembered-25-years-later-1.2663676

Dear Ljubomir, I know I,' a little late in discussing this issue. One of the reasons is that i'm not up to datw witth high-tech facilities that migt be used for censorship, for example.Many thanks to you and Michael. I learn my lesson from both of you and remember of Tiananmen Square 25 years ago and not only of that event, but many others , too.

Yes, Janina, 1989 is really a year to remember, and fortunately it had also some happy moments (for you and me :)) - Solidarnosc, Hungary's bravery and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Deaar Michael, I must say I remember very well those days of "Solidarnośc" and everything that followed after, including the fall of Berlin Wall, Hungary and the domino effect that influenced some other East European countries. But 25 years after.... I have some very deep reflections and not all of them are of positive nature but I still believe in goodness, remain being optimistic about future, especially when observing my students and their fight to find the proper ways to go through their lives.

Best regards . Janina

With July 17, Microsoft's Bing search engine is following Google in taking requests for removing search results according to the 'right to be forgotten'.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/16/eu-privacy-microsoft-idINKBN0FL2O120140716

It seems to be directed only to individuals in Europe, though. So, non-Europeans have to fight for their right again?