Google, the internet search giant, took a strong stance against the censorship of its search results, telling French regulators in a blog post that it will not implement so-called “right to be forgotten” requests on a worldwide basis.

Google applied a May 2014 ruling by the European Court of Justice that allows users to ask search engines to delist links with personal information about them. It has since then set up a platform allowing anyone who wishes to be delisted from links to do so. The CNIL, the French data protection authority, asked Google to apply this globally and not only for google.fr and other European sites. […]

“This is a very difficult debate because in many cases, it is important to protect the right to privacy and to do so at a global level, but it can also be difficult to make a judgment” said Felix Treguer, from the Squaring of the Net, an advocacy group that promotes digital rights and freedoms of citizens.

“For instance, when countries such as Iran, or other countries with little respect for freedom of expression decide that, for example, content regarding homosexual practices for example, is illegal, and order Google in Iran to take down that content at a global level, we, in western democracies, and many people around the world would think this goes too far.”

It begs the question of freedom of speech, but also of how much privacy a person is allowed to have as well. […]

http://www.english.rfi.fr/france/20150731-google-challenges-france-over-right-be-forgotten