Last week a Tokyo court issued an injunction requiring Google to take down 120 search results that implicated a Japanese citizen with past crimes. The injunction was requested when the plaintiff felt his life would be endangered by the results that would come up when his name was looked up on the search engine. This is only yet another court ruling that has serious ramifications for the website.
While Google is reviewing the preliminary injunction and the ruling is provisional, it still opens doors for further “forget me†requests like the several thousand that came in from Europe when a similar law passed. While Google is doing its best to follow local laws, “being forgotten†can only go so far. While Google can “take down†and hide URLs, it does not have the power to make them fully disappear. In fact, a website titled “Hidden from Google†puts up repository links that are censored by search engines. For more details on this story, click here.