The 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 generally have the right to have pictures of themselves deleted from Google’s hit list – regardless of whether they are genuine or not.
In the case heard by the European Court of Justice, two German financial entrepreneurs were outed 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 of the men’s names or company names showed the articles along with the image results, which displayed the scurrilous images directly in the hit list as image results from Google Images. Both the search results and the image hits linked to the site where the entrepreneurs were singled out as jokers in the investment industry.
The businesses had requested to be “forgotten” by Google under the GDPR, but Google refused to remove the content on the grounds that the articles and photographs were in a “professional context” and that Google had no knowledge that the data 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 deleted
If an affected person can show, through evidence that he himself submits to Google, that information about him is incorrect, then Google must delete 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 constitute an important tool for capturing the attention of Internet users, and can arouse an interest in accessing the articles they illustrate,” writes the court in its judgment.
If the information in the text article turns out to be incorrect, Google must therefore also remove the images.
“In fact, removing the article would not have any purposeful effect if the thumbnail images were still displayed, since in that case Internet users would still have the possibility to access the entire article to which the images relate, via the link to the website where the article was published to which these images refer to”, writes the European Court of Justice.
Stricter view of images
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 informational interest may 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 informational interest, since the image in this context must be judged for itself.
According to the European Court of Justice, the suspended investment entrepreneur therefore has, in practice, the right to have the images of himself removed from the search results, regardless of what is written in the articles where the images appear. The pictures, 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 do not 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 protection of their personal data, it does not affect the outcome of the request for that the photographs should not be displayed as thumbnails in the list of search results”.
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