The European Union’s highest court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), ruled on Tuesday that Internet search engines like Google must erase links related to webpages in certain cases where the information contained is deemed “inadequate” or “irrelevant,” according to a press release issued by the ECJ.

In the matter before the Luxembourg-based ECJ, an attorney named Mario Costeja González previously filed a complaint with the Spanish Data Protection Agency claiming that his privacy rights had been violated. Specifically, Gonzalez was displeased that entering his name in Google’s search engine drew results including a legal notice dating back to a 1998 story on his forced property sale to satisfy mounting personal debt.

After both the publication in question and Google refused to take down the information, González brought a claim alleging that his privacy rights were being violated according to the European Commission's Directive on Data Protection, which guarantees a right to be forgotten in cases where information is incomplete or inaccurate.

While this decision may provide some reassurance for individuals to protect their personal freedoms, individuals should take some caution about the difficulty in implementing such a scheme. "It looks difficult to enforce on a large scale and may be very disruptive for the functioning of search engines going forward," Luca Schiovani, from analyst research center Ovum, told Ars.

We've previously written about other overseas individuals who have unsuccessfully tried to remove Google search results, like the owner of an oceanfront vacation spot called "Camping Alfaques" in southern Spain. That individual was a child in 1978 when a tanker truck exploded into a fireball on the road just beyond the site. Tons of fuel ignited, immediately turning 200 campers to ash and badly burning several hundred more. In that case, the owner of the site was unable to have gruesome pictures of charred bodies purged from the search results for the campsite.

“Most surprising is that the court has come down firmly in favor of a ‘right to be forgotten,'” Richard Cumbley, an attorney with the London-based firm Linklaters, told The New York Times. Discussing González’s case, Cumbley continued, “Given that the EU has spent two years debating this right as part of the reform of EU privacy legislation, it is ironic that the ECJ has found it already exists in such a striking manner.”

"This is a disappointing ruling for search engines and online publishers in general," a Google spokesman told Ars.