Google has revealed its solution for removing URLs from its index that any European demands be forgotten from the public conscience: a form.

Google already has forms for takedown requests that relate to copyright issues, and its response to the Court of Justice of the EU's 13 May decision that the public has the digital "right to be forgotten" appears to be along similar lines.

The form is simplistic, but it comes with a few caveats for the user, the most important being that a copy of a valid photo ID must be attached. The public can make takedown requests on behalf of others, but the photo ID of the target individual must always be attached. Complainants have to provide their name and e-mail address, the country whose law applies to the request, the name of the individual featured in the relevant search results, and a list of every URL they want taken down. The key part of the form is the complainant's explanation for the takedown since, as Google notes, the EU ruling only relates to information in its index that is "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed."

Google is in the difficult situation of having to weigh up matters that courts are generally positioned to handle—the individual's right to privacy versus the public interest in that information. Whether Google is the right entity to carry this responsibility, or whether it even has the capacity to, is unclear just yet. We do know that Google is set to launch a committee made of its own senior executives and independent experts in the field, including data protection regulators and academics, to deliberate a plan to deal with the EU ruling, which is widely expected to open up the possibilities for inadvertent censorship. Although the form has been launched, there doesn't appear to be a further plan in place right now. If anyone were to make a request now, they would receive a message saying that Google has placed it in a queue and is currently building its link removal system.

Of course, Google has no desire or intention to censor the Web. But thus far, its only source of information for why a URL should be removed will be the complainant's own explanation. Within the form, there is space to "explain how this URL in search results is irrelevant, outdated, or otherwise inappropriate." There is no demand for verifiable evidence.

We know already that the requests that have poured in since May 13 do not all abide by the terms of the EU ruling. In a revealing interview with the Financial Times, Google CEO Larry Page shared statistics on takedown requests made to date—which amount to "a few thousand." Thirty-one percent of requests from the UK and Ireland related to frauds or scams, 20 percent to arrests or convictions for violent or serious crimes, 12 percent to child pornography arrests, five percent to the government and police, and two percent related to celebrities. Things like scams are exactly the kind of public interest items that Google notes will be excluded from "right to be forgotten" takedowns, along with "professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials."

Google has admitted that many requests have already come from public figures attempting to remove embarrassing information. Anyone attempting to do so would do well to remember a few things.

First off, Google is of course likely to reject the request, and the complainant will have added to the mountainous burden facing the Internet giant in dealing with fraudulent or invalid requests versus matters of real concern to ordinary members of the public having their digital rights infringed. Second, even if a result is removed—and in turn removed from every European Google URL—it will still appear in Google search results outside of Europe. So if someone decides to run the search from within the UK but using google.com, the result will still appear in the US version.

It's also likely—although Google has not confirmed it—that a note will appear at the bottom of search results, just as it does when copyrighted material is removed, flagging up that something is missing. That system is part of Google's own ethos to be a totally transparent company, something it feels has been threatened by the EU ruling. As such, it's also likely to add the new takedown requests to its annual transparency report—or the statistics at the very least. So far, we know that most requests have come from Germany (40 percent), with Spain and the UK following well behind with 14 and 13 percent respectively and Italy and France in at just 3 and 2 percent.

Of course, this is the hope—that Google will strive not only to balance public interest and the right to privacy but its own ethos of transparency with the legal minefield it has been presented with. But we have thus far not been presented with any such evidence that this is the road it will choose.

Julia Powles, a law researcher at the University of Cambridge, told Wired.co.uk that she believes the form is "disappointingly clever," and perhaps not a completely genuine response to Google's predicament. After seeing the form, "the public will do the job of decrying the ruling as unworkable," she said.

"Personally I think it's a real shame that it shows no proactive creativity beyond the ruling, particularly after the time and huge amount of interest and concern this case has generated," Powles said. "Google doesn't explicate how it will make the effects transparent, e.g., by promising to show in the de-identified form how results are dealt with or algorithms re-engineered. It therefore does little to ameliorate private censorship concerns. Nor has Google offered in any way an explanation for how its solution could interface with other intermediaries. This shows a lack of leadership in responding to a ruling that presents a significant opportunity."

She argued that the simplistic response puts the emphasis on a user working hard for their removal request—particularly because they have to copy and paste every single URL that affects their case. "Just think how many URLs there are now to Costeja's case!" she said, pointing to Mario Costeja González, the man who originally brought the "right to be forgotten" case to the EU courts over a news article that mentioned his house had been repossessed after he failed to pay his debts. "Google is the one with the capacity to do this, not users."

And although we can conjecture that there will be a disclosure notice at the bottom of search results, Google has so far done nothing to assuage "the legitimate public concern about untraceable, non-transparent removal of information," said Powles.

Page told the Financial Times in an interview published Thursday that he fears the effects the EU ruling will have both on innovation and on censorship. Google, of course, has huge resources for dealing with these types of requests and can get its developers working on algorithm tweaks once a plan is in place. For a young startup entering into the age of the "right to be forgotten," it will be challenging to survive the economic burden. He added: "Certainly, I worry about the effect that might have on democracy over time if we don't do that perfectly."

This is the biggest worry for some, that public figures will use it to benefit themselves and keep the public in the dark. Perhaps more worrisome, he told the Financial Times that the ruling will be leapt upon by "other governments that aren't as forward and progressive as Europe to do bad things. Other people are going to pile on, probably... for reasons most Europeans would find negative." It's the same argument used for the fallout of the mass spying carried out by the National Security Agency in the US—that the revelations, and the lack of a deliberate and reasoned response from the US government, will give other nations all the fuel they need to argue for a closed Web.

"The whole 'this opens the way for repressive governments to censor the Internet' is a complete scare tactic, completely disconnected from the facts of the case. It's an easy and lazy argument with pernicious consequences because it's part of the broader anti-regulation narrative of the Internet behemoths," argued Powles.

European Commission Vice President Viviane Reding said that Google's launch is "a good development."

"It was about time, since European data protection laws [have existed] since 1995. It took the European Court of Justice to say so. The right to be forgotten and the right to free information are not foes but friends."

Despite concerns over the implementation and implications of such a takedown tool and system, Reding used the launch as a sign that "fears of practical impossibility raised before were unfounded." It's most likely far too premature for this kind of optimism.

Reding also went on to argue optimistically that the ruling will not harm media freedoms, saying, "It's not about protecting one at the expense of the other but striking the right balance in order to protect both."

"The European Court made it clear that two rights do not make a wrong and has given clear directions on how this balance can be found and where the limits of the right to be forgotten lie," Reding said. "The Court also made clear that journalistic work must not be touched; it is to be protected."

This story originally appeared on Wired UK.