Yesterday took place the hearing of the trial in which Google is litigating against the Spanish Agency for the Protection of data (AEPD), which has demanded to remove from its search engine a series of data related to specific persons. For example, a person sued for a medical error was later acquitted, but if you type his name in Google's search engine , it only appears that he was sued.

Google's position is that those data appear in public media (such as official bulletins, or press), and Google only collects (or 'stores') them, automatically. Therefore the manager of those data is the source of information, but not the search engine. In fact, the Spanish Law and the Community rules and regulations establish that this subject of auxiliary Internet companies are not responsible for the contents they show, since they do not create such contents, they only store or expose them.

On the contrary, the AEPD and individuals consider that Google must remove such data when requested to do so by the persons concerned. The protection of personal data would thus require that a subject's personal data should not appear eternally on the Internet. Although it may have been lawfully made public at a given time (for example, a fine imposed), Google allows it to be easily found by anyone, even many years later. This requirement is even more justified if it is shown that this data has been annulled (in the example above, that the defendant was acquitted).

Against this, Google counterargues that requiring it to operate in this way would be a form of "censorship", controlling the publication of data, and limiting the right to information.

The question requires a lot of clarification. But in a general evaluation , it seems excessive that Google refuses to remove these data: does the "right to information" really allow that a data disclosed one day in an official bulletin is accessible on network to the eyes of millions of people with total impudence? And on a more concrete level, if the person concerned proves the rectification or cancellation of the data, does he/she not have the right to have this information removed by Google? Once again, the diffusion effect of the Internet sample has its chiaroscuros: lots of information, yes, but to the detriment of privacy.