The European Union Court of Justice found that individuals have a right to control their private data and that they have the right to request that information be “forgotten” when the results show links to information that is no longer accurate or relevant, the Associated Press reports.
Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Justice, welcomed the judgment. “Today’s court judgement [sic] is a clear victory for the protection of personal data of Europeans,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “Big data need big rights.”
The advisory judgment stemmed from a Spanish case against Google, ruling that the search engine is responsible for the content that appears after a query, and that it is not just hosting links to it and summaries about it. It also found that Google must respond to legitimate requests to remove data; exceptions could be made when the information is relative to a public figure, especially a politician, and it would be deemed against the public interest to remove the information.