France says parent company must also apply RTBF rule for Google

The French data privacy regulator Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) has turned down the appeal of Google regarding the court’s decision, ordering them to remove all pertinent data for the “right to be forgotten” (RTBF ) not just in Google France or other European countries, but even in the search engine’s global domain as well. While Google was willing to implement the RTBF rule in Europe but were contesting the fact that even google.com itself would have to follow suit.

The RTBF allows citizens of the European Union to demand that search engines delete results when searching for their name if the links contain information that is incorrect, irrelevant, outdated, or damaging. Google claims that “as a matter of principle”, they disagree that France or any other national data authority should dictate global policies in controlling the content that people from other countries should have access to. But the CNIL ruled that once a delisting has been accepted under the RTBF, it should also be implemented across all the extensions, including the parent company.

Google now has to comply with the ruling and remove more than tens of thousands of delistings on google.com and other non-European domains as well. Failure to do so may result in a fine of around €300,000, with the possibility of increasing from 2-5% of global operating costs under the incoming European regulation.

At this point, Google doesn’t have any other legal recourse to appeal the ruling of the CNIL due to French laws. But if the fines will be imposed, then they can still challenge it with the Supreme Court for Administrative Justice, or the Council of the State. Wanna bet that they would rather be fined and then have the chance to appeal later rather than comply with this ground-breaking ruling, 100%?

VIA: The Guardian