Japanese court orders Google to remove search results revealing a man's criminal past

[Himanshu Arora]

Google has been hit by another privacy setback. A Japanese court has ordered the company to delete some search results related to a man that are considered to be infringing his privacy rights.

Back in June, the man requested an injunction from the court, arguing that the search results lead to articles suggesting he was involved in a past crime, something he says not only compromises his privacy, but also threatens his life.

Judge Nobuyuki Seki of the Tokyo District Court agreed with the man's argument, and said in his ruling that some of the results do “infringe personal rights”, and Google "has the obligation to delete them", ordering the search giant to delete around 120 of about 230 search results.

“This is good news for those who feel their lives are threatened and are sickened physically and psychologically by Google’s search results”, said the plaintiff’s lawyer, Tomohiro Kanda. “It was groundbreaking that the court didn’t see the search engine in a special light as it had been before”.

Kanda also said that it is likely the first time a Japanese court has ordered a search engine operator to delete search results, adding that the Mountain View, California-based company has already deleted some of the search results.

“We remove pages from our search results when required by local law — including Japan’s long-standing privacy and defamation laws”, Google said. “We’re currently reviewing this preliminary injunction from the Tokyo District Court”.

Last year, a Tokyo court issued a provisional order requesting Google to remove specific search terms from its "autocomplete" feature. The news also comes a few months after the Court of Justice of the European Union ordered Google to delete search results related to a Spanish man, saying that individuals have the right to be forgotten.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/58393-japanese-court-orders-google-remove-search-results.html

 

[davislane1]

Smells like soft censorship to me.

 

[VitalyT]

Criminals complain about their insecurity...really? What a bag of bollox!

 

[Rippleman]

Quote: "“This is good news for those who feel their lives are threatened and are sickened physically and psychologically by Google’s search results”

--- Should say ----

“This is good news for those who feel their lives are threatened and are sickened physically and psychologically by their past actions”

So, they themselves are not responsible for their past actions, but Google is? lol

 

[JohnCB]

We're living in the Revisionist Era.

 

[Ultraman1966]

Once again a court misunderstands what a search engine does. What a bunch of retards.

 

[davislane1]

Question: If a person's past is supposed to have no influence on their present, why are the transgressions of sex offenders public information? I hereby petition the governments of the world to make private the pasts of all those convicted of sex crimes!

*silence*

Yeah, that's what I thought.

 

[Adhmuz]

Well good luck living a life without regret, mistakes or crime. It's human nature to make mistakes, it's also human nature to forgive and/or forget, at least for most people. The Internet never forgets, and is constantly being updated with more information, it's only a matter of time before everyone has, in one form or another, dirt dug up on them. Then everyone will be complaining and things will be changed, until then however nothing will change. Being responsible for ones past actions is one thing, being punished after paying your dues is another. Unfortunately the 130+ results in question are not detailed and therefore knowing exactly what this Japanese "man" is trying to protect himself from is unknown. It's ironic that he's technically trying to protect himself from, well, himself, or at least his past self. I know the logical answer to all this is don't do anything illegal, but I prefer the idea of not getting caught, everyone does something illegal at some point in their lives, just hope no one is there to get it on video.

Please don't waste time and reply to this saying you've never done anything illegal, because I simply won't believe you no matter how blue in the face you get.

 

[Guest]

Google censored more than 90% of the real internet content davislane1 good morning.

 

[Mikymjr]

Everyone has something he or she isn't proud of. We don't know how far this man took it upon himself to change after regretting what he did. It wouldn't be fair to just keep having bad from the past, popping up somewhere and making it hard to live, life in a good way. There are others that keep on the path to destruction of themselfs, but we can't just put the ones that try hard to get back on the right path in the same boat as well

 

[Guest]

Change name to john Smith, problem solved