google and the Right to Be Forgotten

 In 2009, Mario Costeja Gonzalez, a self-employed attorney living in a small town outside Madrid, Spain, casually “googled” himself and was startled by what came up on his computer screen. Prominently displayed in the search results was a brief legal notice that had appeared more than a decade earlier in a local newspaper, La Vanguardia, which listed property seized and being auctioned by a government agency for nonpayments of debts. Among the properties was a home jointly owned by Costeja and his wife. Costeja immediately realized that this information could damage his reputation as an attorney. Equally troubling, the information was no longer factual. He had paid his debt nearly a decade earlier. Abanlex, Costeja’s small law firm, depended on the Internet to gain much of its new business, which was often generated by a Google search. Potential clients might choose not to hire him, based on the old auction notice, he reflected. His mind then turned to

the possible effects of this kind of information on other people’s livelihoods. “There are people who cannot get a job because of content that is irrelevant,” he thought.1 “I support freedom of expression and I do not defend censorship. [However, I decided] to fight for the right to request the deletion of data that violates the honor, dignity and reputation of individuals.”2 The next week, Costeja wrote to La Vanguardia and requested that it remove the article about his debt notice, because it had had been fully resolved a number of years earlier and reference to it now was therefore entirely irrelevant.3 In doing so, he was making use of his rights under Spain’s strong data protection policies, which recognized the protection and integrity of personal data as a constitutional right under Section 18 of the nation’s Data Protection Act.4 In response, the newspaper informed him that it had recently uploaded to the Internet all its past archives, dating back to 1881, to allow them to be searched by the public. It also noted that the auction notice had originally been publicly posted in order to secure as many bidders as possible. The newspaper refused Costeja’s request, stating that the information was obtained from public records and had thus been published lawfully.5 To be sure, the real problem for Costeja was not that the notice had appeared in

La Vanguardia’s digital library, but that it had shown up in the results of the most widely used search engine in the world, Google, where potential clients might use it to judge his character.6 Following this reasoning, Costeja then wrote to Google Spain, the firm’s

Spanish affiliate, only to be told that the parent company, Google Inc., was the entity responsible for the development of search results.7 Costeja was taken aback by this development. “The resources Google has at their disposal aren’t like those of any other citizens,” he reflected.8 Costeja felt he would be at a disadvantage in a lawsuit against an industry giant like Google. In March 2010, after his unsuccessful attempts with the newspaper and Google Spain, Costeja turned to Spain’s Data Protection Agency (SDPA), the government agency responsible for enforcing the Data Protection Act. “Google in Spain asked me to address myself to its headquarters in the U.S., but I found it too far and difficult to launch a complaint in the U.S., so I went to the agency in Spain to ask for their assistance. They said I was right, and the case went to court,” he explained.9 In a legal filing, Costeja requested, first, that the agency issue an administrative order requiring La Vanguardia either to remove or alter the pages in question (so that his personal data no longer appeared) or to use certain tools made available by search engines in order to shield the data from view. Second, he requested that the agency require that Google Spain or Google Inc. remove or conceal his personal data so that it no longer appeared in the search results and in the links to La Vanguardia. Costeja stated that his debt had been fully resolved.10 With these steps, a small-town Spanish lawyer had drawn one of the world’s richest and best-known companies, Google, into a debate over the right to be forgotten.

Google Inc. was a technology company that built products and provides services to organize information. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Mountain View, CA, Google’s mission was to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. It employed more than 55,000 people and had revenues of $45 billion. The company also had 70 offices in more than 40 countries. The company’s main product, Google Search, provided information online in response to a user’s search. Google’s other well-known products provided additional services. For example, Google Now provided information to users when they needed it, and its Product Listing Ads offered product image, price, and merchant information. The company also provided AdWords, an auction-based advertising program and AdSense, which enabled websites that were part of the Google network to deliver ads. Google Display was a display advertising network; DoubleClick Ad Exchange was a marketplace for the trading display ad space; and YouTube offered video, interactive, and other ad formats.

 

Please Read the Case below and answer the following questions.

1. What’s are the central facts of the case and the assumptions you are making on the bases of these facts?
2. What is the major overriding issues in this case? (what major questions is use does this case address that merit there its study in this course and in connection with the chapter material you are no covering)
3. What sub issues are related issues are present in the case that merit consideration and discussion?
4. Who are the stakeholders in this case and what are their stakes? (what challenges, threats, opportunities are posed by the stakeholders?)
5. What economic legal, ethical, philanthropic, responsibilities does the company have and what exactly are the nature and extent of these responsibilities?
6. If the case involves a company’s action, evaluate what the company did or did not do in handling the issue affecting effect it.
7. What recommendations would you make in this case? If a company’s strategies our actions are involved, should the company have created at did the way I did? What action should the company take now, and why? Be as specific as possible, and include a discussion of alternators you have consider but decided not to pursue. Mention and discuss any important implementation considerations.