Google appeals against French decision on 'right to be forgotten' globally

Google is appealing the French data protection regulator's (CNIL's) decision that it must remove / censor ''right to be forgotten'' (RTBF) URLs on a global basis. The search company had earlier sought to strike a compromise and enforce RTBF in Europe but carry the content in other markets with different rules and privacy standards.

That solution was not acceptable to CNIL, which asserted that to be effective, delisting had to be executed across all Google domains worldwide. Google did not fully comply, and the French authorities finally fined the company $112,000 for not removing RTBF links from its full index.

Google has now appealed the CNIL order to the Conseil d'État, France's highest administrative court.

In a blog post, In a blog post, Google's global general counsel Kent Walker rejected the CNIL's order "as a matter of both law and principal."

Walker said, "We comply with the laws of the countries in which we operate. But if French law applied globally, how long will it be until other countries - perhaps less open and democratic - start demanding that their laws regulating information likewise have global reach?  This order could lead to a global race to the bottom, harming access to information that is perfectly lawful to view in one's own country. For example, this could prevent French citizens from seeing content that is perfectly legal in France. This is not just a hypothetical concern. We have received demands from governments to remove content globally on various grounds - and we have resisted, even if that has sometimes led to the blocking of our services.

"It's not clear what would happen if the Conseil d'État upheld CNIL's decision. I'm not sure whether there's another available appeal to the European Court of Justice."