LONDON — Europe’s highest court limited the reach of the landmark online privacy law known as “right to be forgotten” on Tuesday, restricting people’s ability to control what information is available about them on the internet.

In a decision with broad implications for the regulation of the internet, the European Court of Justice ruled that the privacy rule cannot be applied outside the European Union. In another ruling, the court said the right to free expression and information must be weighed carefully before deleting links related to certain categories of personal data.

The decisions more carefully define the scope of the right to be forgotten, which is a centerpiece of the European Union’s internet privacy laws. The standard, which was established in 2014, can be used to force Google and other search engines to delete links to websites, news articles and databases that include personal information considered old, no longer relevant or not in the public interest.

The ruling to limit the geographical reach of the right to be forgotten is a victory for Google against a French effort to force the company and other search engines to take down links globally.