Published 10 December 2022 at 09.39
Law & Justice. Search engine giant Google must start deleting lies about private individuals from its search results, according to a new ruling from the European Court of Justice. At the same time, the view of images is sharply sharpened. According to the ruling, private individuals are generally entitled to have pictures of themselves deleted from Google's hit list – regardless of whether they are genuine or not.
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In the case heard by the European Court of Justice, two German financial entrepreneurs were exposed as investment pranksters on an American news website, which also published pictures of them driving luxury cars, flying helicopters and posing in front of airplanes.
Google searches for the men's names or company names brought up the articles along with the image results, which showed the racy images. Both the search results and the images linked to the site where the entrepreneurs were singled out as pranksters in the investment industry.
The entrepreneurs had requested to be “forgotten” from Google in support of the GDPR, but Google refused to remove the content on the grounds that the articles and photographs was part of a “professional context” and that Google had no knowledge that the information was incorrect. The “right to freedom of information” therefore outweighed the protection of privacy, according to Google.
However, the European Court of Justice notes that Google has no justification for this view, as the right to freedom of information “does not include a right to disseminate and gain access to incorrect information”.
False information must be removed
If an affected person can show, through evidence that he himself submits to Google, that information about him is incorrect, then Google must remove the information, according to the European Court of Justice.
As for the images, Google believes that the search engine should be exempt from liability because it has only published images in a neutral context and has not reproduced to any extent the accusations contained in the articles in which the images were included. But the European Court of Justice does not buy that, which believes that it is obvious that people will become curious, click on the images and read the texts on the website that Google links to.
“Photographs as such are an important tool for capturing the attention of Internet users, and can arouse a interest in gaining access to the articles they illustrate,” the court writes in its judgment.
If the information in the text article turns out to be incorrect, Google must therefore remove the images as well.
“Removing the article would not have any purposeful effect if the thumbnail images were still displayed, because in such a case internet users would still have the opportunity to access to the entire article to which the images refer, via the link to the website where the article was published to which these images refer,” writes the EU Court.
Stricter view of images< br>At the same time, the EU Court clarifies that those who want to publish images of a person – even when it comes to a search engine – typically must have stronger arguments than those who only want to publish texts with personal information.
In practice, the European Court of Justice also imposes on Google a general obligation to remove images of ordinary people who are not public figures from its search results upon request. Only when the image in itself carries a great interest in information can the image remain, according to the EU Court, which writes that this also applies if the article to which the image links would have a great interest in information, because the image in this context must be judged for itself.
According to the European Court of Justice, the suspended investment entrepreneur therefore has the right in practice to have the images of himself removed from the search results, regardless of what is written in the articles where the images appear. The images, taken out of context, have “only a small informational value” according to the EU Court, which sends the following instruction to the German court, which will soon make a decision in the case:
“This means that if the appellants' failure to succeed in their request to have the aforementioned article removed, on the grounds that freedom of expression and freedom of information must take precedence over their right to respect for privacy and the protection of their personal data, does not affect the outcome of the request to withhold the photographs in the form of thumbnails in the list of search results”.