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[the session begins at 33 minutes. please forward to that point] eric schmidt: can we geteverybody's attention? ladies and gentlemen,may we get started? i'd like to say goodmorning to everyone here. and i really want to welcomeyou all to the advisory council that we've put togetherin this public meeting. it's very, very importantfor google to be doing this. i'm eric schmidt,chairman of google.

we've been working hard tocomply with the ruling that's been handed down by thecourt of justice in may. and it requires that we evaluateindividual requests to remove information in searchresults about a person. and a complicatedissue is at stake. everybody understands this. and we need to balancethe right of information against individualrights of privacy and those sorts of things.

so we convened a councilof genuine experts whose criteriaand qualifications are amazing to talkto us about this. now, on the panel, and notin any particular order, i have professor lucianofloridi, professor of information ethics at oxford. sylvia kauffmann editor of thefrench newspaper "le monde." lydia lidia kolucka-zuk,former director of the trust of civil societyfor central and eastern europe.

frank la rue, formerun special rapporteur on the promotion andprotection of the right of freedom and opinionand expression. jose-luis pinar,former spanish dpa and professor of theuniversidad san pablo, correct? sabineleutheusser-schnarrenberger, former federal ministerof justice in germany. peggy valcke, professor of lawat the university of leuven. jimmy wales, founderof wikipedia.

and to my left,david drummond, who is the senior vicepresident of google. what we're going todo is we're going to have eight experts present. and again, i really encourageyou to follow their expert commentary on allof these subjects. and on my left, wehave-- and i guess i'll introduce them in order--cecilia alvarez, milagros del corral, alejandro parales, juanantonio hernandez, montserrat

dominguez, pablo lucas murillo,javier mieres, and alberto inglesias garzon. apologies for my bad spanish. and what we're going todo is the presentations will be conducted in--the meeting will itself be in english withpresentations in spanish. now, if you all donot have headsets, you're going to need them. it's going to bemostly, i think,

in a mix of spanish andenglish, going back and forth. and what else? we're going to do a firstsession from roughly now till 12:40, so thefirst four experts. we'll take a shortbreak so everybody can get up and get around. and then continue with ourfour cases in the afternoon, ending about 2:00 pm. i will take questions.

because of thecomplexity of this, we're going to ask you to writeyour questions down and submit them. and obviously, we'lldo the best we can. but we want to hear questionsfrom the audience as well. so i thought what iwould do is introduce mrs. alvarez to makeher presentation. and you know you're up first. she is the vice president--and correct me if any of this

is wrong-- thespanish association of privacy professionals, andrepresents this association in the confederation of europeandata protection organizations. you're also the headof data protection area of practice of aspanish law firm. she's a lawyer and a memberof different committees, including the steeringcommittees of international privacy law forum, theexperts privacy working group of the oecd.

you've published asignificant number of articles on the right to be forgotten. the floor goes to you. cecilia alvarez:well, would like to first thank you,the advisory board, for inviting me to provide mycontribution to this discussion i am particularlyhonored to be here. so thank you very much. and in particular, and becausei have these other experts that

accompany me, which makesme very happy to be here. i will switch into spanish inorder to make the statement. [speaking spanish] interpreter: i would liketo express the following. what i'm going topresent here is my own personal legalopinion, but is in no way related to the situationsin which i work or to my clients,future or past clients. i've read severalarticles on the ruling

of the europeancourt of justice, that the freedom of informationprevailed over the data protection, and the browserswere the only judges. i don't know whetherthat is true, but i think thatwe can rightly say that the ruling fromthe court of justice truly expose how thedata protection issue is an issue that we shouldtake it [inaudible] from now on very seriously.

and the reactions to this rulinghave been many and diverse. first, of course,the right balance needs to be struck of all ofthe different interests that are at stake in this conflict. second, the type of criteriathat the court of justice and the jurisprudence andthe practice of the data protection, authorities cancontribute and shed some light as to how to this chargethese right balance among all of thedifferent interests.

then, finally, thethird issues is who should be entitledto make that decision? first of all, let's talkabout the right balance of the differentinterests and the conflict behind the rightto be forgotten. i think there are manyunderlying issues. however, we all seemto strive to find one single, verysimple solution. sometimes some information--the users themselves

have uploaded somecontent, and they have what is called "the right to regret,"which may come too late. and i think this lies atthe root of the discussion about the right to be forgotten. but there are other cases inwhich the user has had nothing to do with it, andthird parties have decided to share withothers issues which concern his privateor professional lives. in which case, thestand should not

be the same as thecase in which the user himself has decided toupload that information. so there are differentinterests at stake here-- the interest of the individualaffected by the data protection issue. i've always wonderedwhether they should be more interestedin data protection or more fundamental rights. in my professionalpractice, i have not

come across one singlecase of data protection, but ratherprivacy-related issues. of course, personal datadoes not equal privacy. privacy issues are notconnected to the right to be forgotten, as it is a casewith the impact on the right to honor to your own imageand other fundamental rights, like freedom ofinformation, freedom of expression ofbusiness freedom. but data protection hasbeen necessarily accompanied

by all of these differentrights, which really has a bearing on the typeof criteria or issues which are considered to strikethe right balance of interest. we have more empathy towardsdata protection regarding privacy than right toprotection of the private life. so the interestof a website might be diverse-- legalobligations, freedom of expression, freedomof information. or the interest which might beconsidered not as illegitimate,

the fact that this mightwell be in the interest of the editor of website. or slander, not havingprotection against slander, that's not necessarily goingto mean that this is not right. but there might be differentinterests at stake. and the ruling will relyon the different balance. within the discussion ofthe right to be forgotten, the rights of thesearcher are mainly connected to aneconomic interest.

however, apparentlythe searchers are related to the guaranteedfreedom of private information. i don't know whether thisis the right of the search, but this is a good instrumentalguarantee, these liberties. so there might be a fourthinterest, the interest of the collectivity,the public interest, if you like, in thewidest sense of the word. this is the general interestfor freedom of information and other general interests,such as fraud prevention,

others of a different nature. from the ruling handed down bythe european court of justice-- which, in myopinion, has been too specific to this specificcase-- but the ruling issue, the a statement about theprevalence of the right of the individual over theinterest of the search engine or the [inaudible]public interest to access this information. of course, this balanceof the different interests

should be sought, and otherinterests should prevail. but the burden of the proof,apparently, has been reversed. it's not that the rightto data protection needs to be justified. rather, all the restof the interests must be justified againstversus data protection. in view of these needs tostrike the right balance of the differentinterests in the conflict, we must arrive atthe right criteria.

and there are such criteria. the court of justice, insome cases and rulings, does not include a criteria,just lays the rules, but not based on any criteria. the court ofjustice, though, has stated a number of elements thatneed to be taken into account. but they are notmathematical, of course. therefore, it is not possiblefor a given algorithm to determine whether thisis a good or bad request.

one of such elementsis the nature of the informationin question, which might be sensitive for thelife of the individual. and this, once again, impingesupon the concept of privacy, the public interest to accessthat information, which may vary depending on therole that the individual plays in the public lifewithin these criteria. there are a few of them. it focuses on theelements stemming

from the dataprotection directive. it asked when the informationshould be removed, one way or another. so the right to beforgotten, according to the ruling fromthe court of justice, is just some sort of an updateto the rights of cancellation or opposition in ananalog environment. and i quite agreewith that evolution. but there are moreelements, apart from those

that we can find in thedirective, article 6 or 12 or 14 of the directive, thatneed to be taken into account, not withstanding otherequally valid criteria. what has reallystruck my attention is that this ruling does nottake into account the european human rights charter. one of the important elements ofthe national court of justice, when introducing thisissue, was the impact on the charter of humanrights of this case.

the court mentionedthat this charter does have an impact,especially on article 8, and [inaudible] dataprotection right. but it does make reference,but that's all it does. it just refers to article 10. however, both articlesinclude criteria to determine whenthere is an intrusion to a fundamental right asto the type of restrictions that must be accepted in both.

they revolve around nationalsecurity, public safety, economic well-beingof the country, prevention ofdisorder for a crime, for the protection of therights and freedoms of others. these are both found inboth article 8 and 12. and article 12includes a protection of reputation of whetherthis is closer to the right to protect the owner ratherthan the personal information protection.

another element that theeuropean court of justice revealed is thetemporary criteria, which is quite complex. obviously, i do not thinkit can be determined that 10 years, in the case ofmr. costeja, is a general rule. this is not mathematics. but there is acommon-sense approach that we should useas to the impact that old news can have today.

but information isnot only related to time, but to the context. in the case of mr.costeja, for instance, he had some arrearswith social security. so the temporaryright that he should have, whether he has paidthe debt or not, this might be relevant or not,and whether the debt has prescribed, or whetherthe newspaper has a legal obligation topublish this acknowledgment.

but this is something thathas to be contemplated in every specificcase, of course. and, of course,we'll have to analyze the context during which thisinformation was published. to what end? to what purpose? and what is the usefulnessof that information now for that individual? irrespective of what theeuropean court of justice

has established, there are manyother criteria that they use. there are manyrulings which already deal with the impact ofthe right of personality on the internet. and this court ofjustice apparently has not taken someof them into account. one of my concerns,for instance, is a so-called centerof gravity of interest. this criteria wasused to determine

jurisdictional competence,but it may well have an impact on thetemporary criteria or in the geographic scopeof the right to be forgotten. there is a pending discussionas to whether this request must be limited to the maingeographic area in which the individuallives or worldwide. and that is criteria thatcould be take into account in the discussionsabout this issue. apart from the ruling thati have mentioned before,

there are two otherrulings which have not been taken intoaccount, surprisingly. one of them is impossiblefor me to pronounce. it's in polish--[inaudible] versus poland. one of the criteria wasnot taken into account, and this was due toprocedural reasons. but one of the things thatthe polish court examined was the fact that anews was published or an amendment tothe news published.

and this issomething that exists for a long time inthe freedom of press. this was considered slander. and the court ruled that ifthe applicant had requested that the articleshould be complemented with a rectification sayingthat this had already been ruled by the courts, theresponse from the court would have been more favorable,because the information as such was maintained, butwithin the context,

so that the owneror the individual could be reestablished. according to thecircumstances, it might have beenbetter to do it slow. because if someonewere to have found in the files theoriginal news, this was not connectedto news number two, it would have considered thatthe information was slanderous. this case, it wasprofessional slander

about the professionalismof some lawyers. the second case iwould like to mention is the delfi ruling, inwhich the court establishes a number of criteriaas to the of interests. cecilia alvarez: "thecourt has considered that where the right tofreedom of expression is being balancedagainst the right to respect for privatelife, the relevant criteria in the balancingexercise include

the following elements--contribution to a debate of general interests; howwell-known the person concerned is; the subject of thereport; the private conduct of the person concerned;the method of obtaining the informationand its veracity; the content, form,and consequences of the publication;and the severity of the sanction imposed." interpreter: additionally,article 39 includes an opinion

on the legitimateinterest criteria which are applied in the directive. and this is somethingthat we need to take into account as well. finally, who should waivethe different interests? the ruling is especiallycareful in stating that the process forlegitimacy of the person doing the search and thewebsite are different. in the case of mr. costeja,there was a legal obligation.

in these cases, theruling of the court is positive, because theeffect is quite similar to what it was in theanalog environment. in other words, thearchives are unaltered, but limit the capacity of peopleaccessing that information within your center ofgravity of interest, because these willnot be included in the results of the browsers. but if there is notprotection of the source,

i think the first step weshould analyze is of the source and in the browser to providethe required protection. ok, i'll leave it here. i've completed my 10 minutes. thank you. eric schmidt: thankyou, mrs. alvarez. do we have a questionor two from our panel. on the left, didsomeone have a question? on the right, didsomeone have a question?

male speaker: do wewant to have a question? eric schmidt: we wouldlove to have a question. luciano floridi:just a little bit of an explanation aboutthe right to regret. i think we are pushingaround the word "right" quite regularly. as a philosopher, i understandthe need to think about rights. but will you tellus just briefly, very briefly, whatyou had in mind when

you refer to the"right to regret"? it's a lovely concept. cecilia alvarez:[speaking of spanish] interpreter: well,i have not used "right to regret" asa figure of speech, but not as a legal concept. but part of the rightto be forgotten, and i think this was alsopart of why this was regulated in the draft "regulationon data protection"--

is the impact that digitaltechnology can have on society, which was notoriginally digital. i have seen it myself. when the first socialnetworks were created, people were just dying toget on the social networks. but i think thesetechnologies have matured, and we have seenthe consequences. and therefore we haveseen the right to regret is possibilities,such as, for instance,

if you're looking fora job, and then you have on the internet allof these drunk pictures of your youth. but there are many other cases,not only because these pictures might have been taken whenyou were a teenager, underage. this may give youa second chance. but of course, we are minors. not maybe in the strictsense of the word, but miners in the senseof mastering technology.

and this capacityto absorb technology might lead us to rethinkwhat we have done. this may well disappearwith future generations, because they are muchmore knowledgeable about these new technologies. so they have theforeseeability-- in other words,being able to foresee what the consequences might be. and i think this is asimilar approach to the right

to be forgotten. sabine leutheusserschnarrenberger: i have another question. you mentioned thatnow we have to find the right balance between thedifferent interests and rights to privacy, to information,freedom of expression, and so on. is a search engine theright one to decide? or perhaps do we needanother kind of procedure

to find the right balancebetween these rights? perhaps you can give ussome information to that. cecilia alvarez:[speaking spanish] interpreter: i thinkthat the search engines do play a very difficult role. conflict of interestof this nature have alreadyoccurred in the past. traditionally, itwas the judges who decided and struckthe right balance.

and obviously, judges areknowledgeable about law-- the whole of the law, notonly data protection law, or privacy law, freedom ofinformation or whatever. later on, the controldata protection agencies have intervened, and this hasrepresented a leap forward in striking the right balance. but i don't think the idea ofbalance has been struck yet, but this is not the fault ofthe data protection agency because the data protectionagency cannot be all-knowing.

and data protection, in myprofessional experience, is not living inisolation from other laws. normally, dataprotection coexists with money launderingobligations, insurance obligations, obligationsrelated to freedom of information and expression. i don't know whetherwe can demand that from a data protectionagency, and that's why it is difficult tostrike the right balance.

if we go to the thirdlevel, the search engine, things get evenmore complicated, and it is even more complicatedto reach that capability because they mightnot only be not knowledgeable about thedifferent interests at stake, but there might well be acase of local legislation. and that, of course, representsa very complex issue. second, the interest at stake. the judges seek the interestof justice, truth, and balance.

a data protectionagency is biased because theirinterests, of course, focus on data protection. obviously, in the caseof a search engine, they have differentinterests, which is of a business nature, whichis not necessarily negative, but it's different. and, on top ofthat, we really need to know whether theinformation is accurate

in order to make a decision. if you're only listeningto the individual affected, one cannot be sure whetherthis information is accurate. in the polish case i mentionedbefore, one of the conclusions was that the information had notbeen checked by the newspaper. so how can a searchengine determine that? because they wouldneed that information, and the personaffected by the ruling might not be interestedin mentioning that

to the search engine. so the administratorof the website may well play a role inproviding accurate information so that this can be passedon to a court of justice if we accept that a searchengine role should contribute to swifter justice than goingthrough the courts, as has been the case so far. eric schmidt: professordr. alberto garzon has a doctorate in lawfrom universidad carlos iii

de madrid, where hespecialized in human rights and has lectured onphilosophy of law, political philosophy,and legal theory. he's completed post-docsat the sorbonne, at the university of bologna,and at another university whose name i can't pronounce, andis the author of several books and scientific articles. he is currently thesenior project manager at fundacion gregoriofor human rights.

you have the floor, mr. garzon. alberto garzon: thank you, eric. please do not miss yourheadset because i'm going to address you in spanish. good morning, everyone. i am going to address from theperspective of human rights and also from theperspective of case law. hopefully this will makeit possible for others to provide or shed some lighton such a controversial issue

involving so many differentinterests and elements. i'd like to start witha question or an idea. this ruling shows somekind of paradigm according the absence of aspecific regulation has to resort to the generalregulation that only fits the case in questionpartially, in spite of which the formal structure ofthe ruling is legally correct. the court has decidedthat the specificity of the nature ofsearch engines is not

enough to create an exceptionto the implementation of the european regulationon the processing of personal data. as long as we don't havespecific regulations for search engines, the generalregulation of the protection of personal datawill be implemented even if it causesso many problems. however, this approach,this solution, has been taken tofoster freedoms

and fundamental rights,but at the same time it may violate some fundamentalrights, as a paradox. i am approaching this from theperspective of personal rights and also form the perspectiveof freedom of business. in both cases ibelieve the ruling may bring about someinconsistencies. in the first case,the inconsistency has to do with the fact thatthe initial burden imposed by the court on googlecould be understood also

as an authorization,a green light. the ruling provides thecompany with sufficient power to judge and assess theessential information as it has to do withthe right to privacy. since they are entitledto accept or reject requests for removal,turning google into a judge. so according to thisruling, large companies will be entitled todecide, unilaterally and internationally, onimportant issues having

to do with fundamentaland individual rights, including privacy rights. on peoples' freedom ofchoice and autonomy, it would be possiblefor search engines to create categories,profiles, and metric identities and to protectprivacy, of course. perhaps it would haveno content eventually. according to the way the rulingis being interpreted today, freedom of business is alsoaffected and undermined.

since the ruling apparentlyprovides a solution that substantially changesgoogle's policies, browsers are describedas mirrors of information vis-a-vis online editorsor content creators. there is a certain neutralityand data are apparently processed automaticallyby the browsers. contents appear withouthaving been filtered from a political or legalperspective, at least in europe.

however, contrary to thecase of links violating copyright or contentprotected by copyright, browsers in that case areentitled to automatically delete or remove data. however, this ruling,as we see it today, seems to force these companiesto act in a different manner. they have to carry out aninquiry on the person's identity. everything should be analyzedon a case by case basis.

hundreds ofthousands of requests should be analyzed ona case by case basis and decisions should bebased on a yes or a no. and this is somethingthat still generates a lot of case law in europe. this is tremendous workthat will transform the essence of a companythat is obliged to act as an editor andnot as a messenger, and therefore thisgenerates a paradox.

when the courtdeals or considers browsers to be justmessengers, they are later charged withthe task of assessing the contents of the links. perhaps had they been consideredto be editors initially, they wouldn't beso much affected by data protection regulations. so search enginesare free to decide the design of their businessand are free to accept or reject

removal requests,as reflected in the last paragraph of theruling that mentions a power, and not an obligation,to decide what links are going to be removed. as a result of all this, therewill only be disobedience if a legitimate requestis not taken into account. however, if the request isnot sufficiently grounded, there is nodisobedience whatsoever so they're only obligedor under the obligation

to delete the dataor information, but they may decide to preservethose data at their discretion. some people might believethat search engines act as information intermediariesand no more than that, but there's the riskof violating rights. and, at the same time,you have the obligation to abide with this ruling. however, google'sown mission should be based onaccepting all removal

requests with no exceptionand should automatically remove the linksonce the identity of the person whorequests that removal is checked and verified. so what about thefreedom of expression and the fightagainst censorship? freedom of the pressand so on and so forth. let me remind youthat, according to european tradition,it is the state that

is entrusted with protectingand enforcing those rights. and to protect those rightsin the political sphere, the state will be supported bypublishing houses and reporters or news organizations. they have specific rights to beable to convey and disseminate relevant andtruthful information and opinions provided thenecessary guarantees are met. and by the way, theserights, these freedoms, protect the disseminationof information.

however, it does not guaranteethat the information will reach the audience in aneffective manner, and this has been thesubject of many discussions in the digital era. and the role of searchengines is essential, crucial, to efficiently distributeor disseminate information. we could even saythat their task can be compared to that ofnewspapers in the 19th century. however, this discussion is notactually part of the ruling.

it is a differentdiscussion that should be openedaround the possibility to implement an efficientregulation for search engines where the role of search enginesis considered in its context together with othervery relevant issues. meanwhile, since we don'thave that specific regulation for search engines,google may implement measures to try andpreserve the information without assessing orjudging the contents.

this solution is a halfwaysolution taking into account the differentinterests at stake. google may choose toprovide incentives so that the conflict issettled between the parties and it may offer aconsensus solution as an alternative to the courts. google, of course, is notkeen on losing information, and individuals,at the same time, want to control their personalinformation and the way it's

accessible to the public. and this opens upthe possibility for a new agreement. in exchange of presenting theinformation in a way that's not detrimentalfor the individual, the individual in questionwould waive some of his rights. under request, google mayshift the link in question to a deeper place farfrom the first results. far from the firstpage where, of course,

it could be much moredetrimental for the individual. so the information wouldbe posted to a back page, randomly, providedthe individual decides not to exercise his rightsto oppose or request the removal of that information. of course, individualscannot waive their rights, but we may decide whento exercise those rights. technology and companiesmay form an alliance to work at the serviceof individuals,

independent individuals, whomay find a solution based on the individual's consent. that's a consistent,coherent method to try and preservethat information even if it's not presentedon the first page. perhaps this is not thebest possible solution, it may be subject to a lot ofcriticism, but in my opinion it could be very efficientin a large number of cases. it's a solution based onproportionality and equity

based on the individual'sconsent, which is an essential pillarin today's world-- an essential principlefor freedoms at a time where the internet isgrowing exponentially. so that's my opinion,and i present it to you. thank you very much. eric schmidt: so do we havequestions for mr. garzon? go ahead. sylvie kauffmann: when yousay that this ruling implies

tremendous work for the company,for the search engine, which basically sees itsbusiness being transformed, and has now towork as an editor, is your conclusion fromthat google, in this case, is not the properbody to conduct these inquiries andthese decisions? and make these decisions? alberto garzon: whati'm referring to is that google isfacing a time where

it should have totake decisions. it's up to the freedom todecide whether they want to become editors or they dowant to keep being a messenger. what i'm saying isthat, if they continue with that attitude tryingto evaluate content, they are facing abig transformation within the company. i'm trying not to evaluatewhat google should do. i'm just tryingto show you what's

my big frame of thinking. eric schmidt: questions? jim? jimmy wales: yeah. i was struck by thecontrast you made and the difference betweenthis body of requests and the copyright takedownand notice regime. and i was wondering--unfortunately the translation losesa lot of subtlety,

and so i couldn't quite graspwhat you were suggesting there. are you suggesting somethinglike a notice and takedown regime? i come at this from theperspective of a publisher-- wikipedia-- where certainlinks to entries in wikipedia have been-- we know fromgoogle they've been suppressed, but we don't know why. we have no means of appeal. it's very differentfrom the copyright world

where someone makes acomplaint that says, something in wikipediais copyright to me, we get a complaint thatdetails what the complaint is, and we can push back orwe can agree and solve it. and so i was wondering if that'sthe direction you were heading. alberto garzon: well maybei shouldn't have brought up the copyright issue,because i do not fully understand how it works. as far as i know there'sa safe harbor policy

where google, orother search engines, can choose to deleteimmediately the links that are a copyright infringement. that's an essentialsolution because they don't have to constitutea big decision committee. they don't have to ponder thedifferent rights and liberties. it's the easiest orless complex issue. so i just wasmentioning it in order to compare how huge thetask google is facing.

jimmy wales: thank you. alberto garzon: thank you. eric schmidt: david,did you have a question? david drummond: well, yes. alberto, i had one question. in your commentsyou seemed to say that the rightapproach to this would be for google to automaticallydelete upon receiving requests and that perhaps the role or thejob of balancing other rights

belongs to government. is that accurate? and do you think thatthere's any role for google to play in making thesebalances given court ruling? alberto garzon:what i'm saying is that the sentenceallows google to decide if they want to erase allthe links automatically or to give them theopportunity to evaluate them. but i also want topoint out that there

are two different debates. the current one on howto apply the sentence. the big one, whichis why i think we are here, thatis what is google? what's its role in thedevelopment of the internet? so that's the biggest question--or, sorry, a bigger question. how to deal with theapplication of the sentence. eric schmidt: i think wehave one more quick question from the panel.

luciano floridi: thank you. towards the end ofyour opinion, you expressed the wishof seen perhaps and alliance oftechnology companies to get together and workin favor of the individual. i just wonder whetheryou might spend a little bit of extratime elaborating on that concept, whichseems to be interesting. alberto garzon:actually, i'm not

sure i'm ready todo that right now, because i wasn't trying to implythat all companies should bring their efforts together in orderto comply with the sentence. what i was trying to pointout was a halfway solution for google to complywith the human rights. that is, maybe they shouldnot evaluate contents, but they should try to reachan agreement with the rights holder. that is, maybe give theindividual the chance

to decide where to put thelinks, were to place them. maybe not in the firstplace, or in the first page where i could be interested andshow my linkedin or my facebook or whatever. but if there isany harmful link, why not take itback to somewhere deeper into the search results? i declare myself notready to start now a debate on how the featuredevelopment of the internet

is going to be or even togive you a sound opinion. so i'll just refrain myself. i'm very sorry. eric schmidt: thankyou very much. eric schmidt: yes, go ahead. alberto garzon: ok. yes, a sort of question. are you in favor of a europeanspecific regulation with regard to the role of a search engine'sresponsibility and so on?

perhaps as part of thedata protection directive we are discussing at thismoment over, now, three years. alberto garzon: are youasking me what my opinion is? well, if we wereliving under a union, it makes sense that we havefree traffic data or somehow of common data market. so, yeah, i guessthat makes sense. eric schmidt: i think it's timeto hear-- thank you very much. [inaudible] frommrs. del corral.

she is the former director ofthe national library of spain, that's exciting. and a former deputy assistantdirector general for culture and the director of thedivision of arts and cultural enterprise at unesco aswell as a former member of the broadband commissionfor digital development and a senior advisor to unescofor the development of digital books. she's the author ofover 50 publications--

so pay attention-- on mattersof international organization and culture, and she's alsowritten about the right to be forgotten. you have the floor, mrs. milagros del corral: thankyou very much, mr. chairman. and thank you to the councilfor having invited me to this highly interestingmeeting-- debate. you know, my statement,as you have imagined after having listenedto my biographic data,

is about the impact of contentremoval on historical research and research in general,but particularly in history. of course, i think thereis a general agreement that the internetis and will become more and more thekey for information. this is particularlyimportant for research. and there is a very hugefield-- many people tend to forget when talking science--called social sciences. and i mean by thathistory, statistics,

social scientific statusof all these kinds for which google search is veryimportant-- like for everybody else, by the way--very important to find the information. this we are all in agreement on. now, if deleting content forindividual private interests may prevail verystrongly, this would lead to counterfeithistory, reality of our world incounterfeit history, too.

which is, in my opinion, avery, very serious question. you know, for history, nohuman action is irrelevant. it's interest never expires. i would even say it is lessinterest, very close to now information. this is not thatinteresting for history. so for them, if you put anembargo immediately, it's ok. but they would need it,let's say, 10 years later, and this is why official,confidential information is

under embargo for acertain amount of time and later on they arereleased open to researchers. so this is exactlythe opposite issue to the one we havebeen discussing here. you know, historians workin a very particular way. i know it well because ihave spent most of my life in this ambiance andin this atmosphere. what they need are many, manyapparently irrelevant data. those data they will then crosswith other irrelevant data

coming from other sources. and these will allow them todevelop a quite true portrait of a society ofwhatever century. it would becompletely ridiculous that the sources available forhistorians and for researchers in social sciences would be morereliable and more accessible if they concern the 17th centurythan those of the information society, which are there. and i hope they arethere also for them.

should this right to beforgotten-- by the way inexistent in any legalsystem i know-- should this make advances and be broadlyinterpreted it would mean that most interests related tothings-- so unpleasant things, let's say. related to unpleasant things, beit corruption, dirty business, evictions, private debts,and a lot of things that on a personal basismay be very unpleasant, but few yearslater, when somebody

wants to study theeconomic crisis in europe, this would be more importantthan the statistics provided by the countries orcomplementary information to them. in fact, if all this isdeleted, the net result would be that this turbulentperiod we have been living in and still live in ineurope, would appear, for the people inthe 27th century, something like thehippie arcadia, you know?

this is beautiful renaissanceutopia inspired by [inaudible]. and this is not true. this is a clearcounterfeit of history. i think that to build atailor-made digital reputation for mere personal convenience,or even for vanity reasons, because we don't know how thiswill derive in the future-- i don't know, by the way, howmany requests google has already received on this. i would like to knowthat, but i don't know it.

well, to do that, to tailor-makeyour personal reputation in the digital field, inmy view it is unacceptable. it's contrary to ethics andunfair to history and research precisely at the moment wherecitizens around the world are claiming formore transparency. transparency for others,transparency for some, transparency for me, not for me. i mean, whether we arein favor of transparency, then we have to beconsequent and accept

that transparency ofsomething is true. i'm not talking, ofcourse, about defamation or denigrations. nothing of this kind. but if it is true, youcannot avoid it being known. that i don't understandeven the principal. so obviously the europeandirective of 1946 continuously mentioned in thecourt sentence, as well as the covenant of 1950were obviously not

conceived for thetechnological area. that's obvious. this reminds meof when the royal academy for thespanish language-- several years ago--decided finally to include in the famousofficial dictionary the word enaguas. at that time,spanish women hadn't used petticoats for a long time,but the new word was there.

so here's exactly the opposite. but it reminds mesomehow of this anecdote. this is sort of the reasonbecause the sources, the legal sources, are notapplicable like that-- task force like that. this is probably the reasonwhy the court sentence is so ambiguous,because it is very ambiguous in my humbleopinion, in many aspects. and prefers to transferthe responsibility

to those who dealwith data treatment. this is an easy way to washtheir hand in my opinion. it's like, we havea problem so try to see how you willsolve this problem. in my opinion definingconcepts towards an updated interpretation ofthose legal instruments is something up to the judiciarypowers at the national level, or at the europeanlevel if you prefer. but and it's not up to aprivate company such as google

and other searchengines that are also, i understand, affectedby this sentence. how can we entitle such acompany, google or any others, entitle them witha responsibility to decide where and how far lifeand private life can expand? how far? or could i startthe public interest in a person's private life? where?

where is this point? for example, the factthat i may have or may have had some exposure inthe media, i take my example but i could take theexample with all of you here, or have a lot of followersin the social networks, that already qualifies me to beconsidered a public person. and then i am unable to exercisemy right to be forgotten. where do we put the limit? the wall?

and should google decide it? i think it is really incredible. but, in my opinion,google of course has to comply withthis sentence, but definitely needs clearerguidance-- clearer official guidance-- to do so. i don't know if inthis particular case that has been already examinedmore in detail by the sentence, but in all theother cases to come,

because otherwiseyou are going to have enormous problemson your decisions. because you don't have thecredibility to do that. so, you know, whati would do, if i were google-- this will neverhappen, but just figure out-- i would put a disclosure. every time i delete something,i would put a disclosure saying an entry has beendeleted at the request of the interested person onthe basis of his or her right

is guess this is alreadysomething google could do. and for the interestedperson, you know, the thing has been deleted. the unpleasant informationis not there anymore. but for researchers, and icome back to my first argument, at least it givesthem some path, something that meansthere was information-- unpleasant information--for this person. and then a researcherwill, with a lot

of work typical ofone century ago, at least be able to findthe information they want to cross with other information. so this is moreor less my vision in this particular issue of--and very interesting issue-- of the right to be forgotten. the right to be forgottenmust have a balance. and not a balance of alittle bit here, more there. no, a balance.

for history we needthat parallelity to that right to be forgotten. so the right to be rememberedhas to be also developed. otherwise, we aregoing to really destroy the history of our century. on the other hand, theright to be forgotten sounds more like a romanticconcept than legal language. frankly, i don't expectit to be included in the declaration ofhuman rights very soon.

eric schmidt: well, thank you. do we have somequestions from the panel? yes, ma'am, go ahead. sylvie kauffmann: it'sactually a question for you, and i would relay milagrosdel corral's question about the number ofrequests that google has received forremovals so far. we had the numberin july, i think. i don't think we havehad an updated on.

david drummond: it'sroughly about a-- eric schmidt: turn the mic on. david drummond: mic issue. we're up north of 100,000. eric schmidt: 100,000? more than 100,000. david drummond:more than 100,000. sylvie kauffmann:and can you say how many have beenenforced or rejected or--

david drummond: i don't havethe data on that exactly, ma'am. eric schmidt: ok. well, more questionsfrom the panel. yes, ma'am? it's really interestingto hear something from you about personal data, privateinformation, and history and interest of science. i understood that,for you perhaps, each personal datacould be irrelevant

for history, for science. or can become relevant. first it's irrelevant, andthen can become relevant. but now we have theruling, and now the ruling says we have to delete--search engines have to erase irrelevant links. irrelevant links topersonal information. can you give us somemore concrete examples for this connection between ourpersonal data on the one hand

and history on the other? because with your explanation,i think we can't stop now. there is no way to implementthe right to be forgotten. milagros del corral: infact, this is what it is. why is every piece ofdata no matter how small relevant to historians? well, becausehistory is not only the product of politicians,kings, and rulers and statesmen who makedecisions and change history.

no. when one is interested inso-called local history, the history of thecity of madrid, or history of any othercity you can think of, this is onlypossible by analyzing very, very small pieces of data. for instance, theland registers which can be matched againstthe different jobs and trades performed bysuch and such individual.

who were not big menor big personalities or big politicians, but theyare relevant for history because if you digdeeper you then find out that he had a daughterout of wedlock and this daughter, in turn,grew up to be whoever. maybe an importanthistorical figure. so these personal histories,these family links, these should be protectedby the right to privacy. but these people are longdead and they have no right

to privacy. they are part of history. either personalinformation is relevant for historical purposes. for this reason,i don't think we can say that apiece of information is irrelevant, because nothingis irrelevant for the reasons i've just tried to explain. jose-luis pinar:thank you very much.

i will speak in spanish. interpreter: well,milagros has really given us a very interestingapproach, and this, in my mind, is as connected tostriking the right balance among the different interestsand historical archives. i wonder, is thereany regulation that determines that thereis a certain period of time out to reach information becomespublic or in the public domain? and therefore, theright to be forgotten

is not applicable becausethis is public information. so this is yetanother criterion that needs to be takeninto account when it comes to approachingthe right to be forgotten. and there might be differencesamong different countries, and this makes thingseven more complicated because the result of thesearch of a search engine will be different dependingon the geographic location. milagros del corral:[speaking spanish]

interpreter: yes. as everyone knows, archivesand some other documents stored in libraries aresubject to the consideration of classified material. as long as it is classified,it cannot be published. in fact, manygovernments do really stretch that concept ofclassified information and they would like to haveall information classified as classified, but thatis not possible.

the period of embargoof the information might range between25 to 50 [inaudible]. in the most extremecases, the information relevant or sensitive fornational interests or maybe google will have toremove that information and then restated itback in 50 years time. please excuse me [inaudible]. we are here discussing theobligation off search engines to erase a link to a newsarticle, to a website,

for you, for yourjob, for history it's important to have thecontent, but perhaps it's not important to have to link. interpreter: no, no. it's important to havethe link, because that's the only way you candocument and certify that the contentmentioned in the article is accurate and is documented. well, there's something wehaven't discussed here yet,

and i haven'tmentioned it either, but hopefully we will discussthe following question. to what extent is thissource of a link relevant? the source of thesource document that google is giving access to? because obviously not allsources are equally reliable. this is something thathistorians know very well, and we know too, eventhough we're not historians, the credibility of aprestigious newspaper

is not the same as a slanderousblog site from a citizen. so keeping the linkis important, i think. luciano floridi:i'll keep it short. and forgive me for thequestion, it's a bit difficult. i'm happy to be toldthat it's too difficult. we grew up-- probablymost of the people around here-- in a culturethat, at least in europe, was based on theduty to remember. you know, '40s '50s '60s.

we now flippantlytalk about a right to be forgotten-- theflippantly is charged, i know. as an historian,could you tell us how we move from oneto the other so easily? i know it's difficult. milagros del corral: expressit in different words? luciano floridi: so howwe moved from the duty to remember to the rightto be forgotten so easily? milagros del corral: well, forme it's a duty to remember,

but also a right toremember, to keep the memory. if we don't keep the memory, imean, we know what will happen. we will become definitely robotsor strange things, no more human beings. and, yes, i oppose these tworights, because otherwise i don't see any other way toprotect this information and to ensure that it isavailable and accessible in the future. this is what i wouldcall a right to memory.

maybe this is notthe correct word, but the right to beforgotten is not much better so i don't feel bad for havinginvented the maybe wrong title. but this is whati mean, that there is a right that shouldbe recognized, a right to keep sourcesavailable to do research. if it means that everyera and every century evolves and not worsethan any other ens. let's move to professor mieres.

mieres, right? he's a jurist at the statutoryrights council of catalonia, an associate professorof constitutional law at a universityin barcelona, he's a professor ofconstitutional communitarian law at the judicial school,and a cabinet adviser for the deputy primeminister of spain in the ministry of justice. he's published several workson constitutional justice

and fundamental rightsand obviously including the digital right to beforgotten working paper. mr. mieres? javier mieres:[speaking spanish] interpreter: ithank you very much. first of all, i would like tothank you for the invitation to participate in this meeting. and secondly, i would like tostress that my words here only reflect my own personalopinion and in no way

the views of a publicinstitution that i represent. i'm going to focusmy presentation on three different aspects. first, i will make a numberof considerations regarding the ruling of the googleversus spain or costeja. we still have not yet comeup with one single name from this ruling. so i will make a few commentson the ruling itself. secondly, i will talk about thesubstantial issues underlying

the ruling, how to exercisethe right to be forgotten, and i will, finally, make aproposal which, in my opinion, is a reasonable solutionto all of these issues. and i will conclude witha number of considerations on procedural aspects. first of all, thescope of the ruling. the right to be forgottenlabel has been very successful, in my opinion,because it has really put the focus on the problem ofthe continuity of information

in a technological area. and this is a programwhich has an impact on the rights of personalissues of individuals. but the right to be forgottenis a very successful label, as i've said before, but itraises a number of issues because there mightbe more to the right to be forgotten than whatis contained in the ruling. the may 13, 2014, ruling fromthe european court of justice i think has a wide butlimited scope or impact,

because this ruling acknowledgesthe right of an individual, a european individual, toremove the link to an article or information which may containpersonal data, obsolete data, which might beexcessive, inappropriate, or irrelevant with regardto the legitimate purpose of the search conductedby the search engine. but only in the case that thelink to that information that contains this obsolete datais obtained in a search result when the search term is thename of that individual,

that is what the ruling says. the key data here isthat so-called right to be forgotten in thisruling is implemented on a number of links which areobtained in the search results page when the search term isthe name of that individual and that data isirrelevant, obsolete, or inappropriatefor publication. that ruling therefore has alimited scope of obligation because it considers thatthe search result page, when

the search term is thename of the individual, is related to personalinformation which has an impact on thepersonality of the individual because a search engine producesa search results page which may give you a completeview of the online life of an individual. in other words,all of the results which are connected to thename of that individual then gives you a detailed viewof a life and adventures, life

and miracles if youlike, of that individual. this may well have an impacton the data protection rights of thatindividual if there is data which is obsoleteor excessive or inaccurate. so the ruling does notestablish the obligation to remove that information,but only in the case that the search results containobsolete or inaccurate data. so this informationcan be accessed using any other thesearch term, indeed,

but it will no longer be linkedto the name of that individual even though the nameof the individual may appear in thesearch results page when a difference searchterm has been used. so this is the position adoptedby the court in its ruling, and this can well be interpretedas a less restrictive approach to the dissemination ofinformation or the access to information viathe search engine. a possible alternative wouldbe that the editors make

this informationinvisible for a search engine through the use of arobot which already exists. the problem with this solutionis that the non-index robot excludes-- if i'm not mistaken,correct me if i'm wrong-- excludes the indexationof the page therefore any term in this page wouldbe invisible or opaque. whereas the court has decidedto make this page opaque, invisible, only ifthe search term used is the name of the individualand not any other term.

therefore, i think that thislimited scope of the ruling gives us a clear focus on whereto find the solution in case of a conflict. let me now proposea possible solution to resolve these conflictsregarding the right of removal of a number of links which arethe results of a search when an individual name has beenused as the search term. the court, ofcourse, establishes the regulatory framework,which is the data protection

directive which establishesthat a search engine, anyone processing data cansearch information if it's a legitimate search. and if, in the case ofgoogle, the search engine has a legitimate purpose,economic or business model is to offer a powerful businesstool that helps individuals to access information, to findinformation, and, of course, they derive a business, aneconomic, interest from that, which is perfectly legitimate.

and the third parties do havetheir on legitimate interests as well. the users who access thesearch engine and they have the public interest ofaccessing that information. so we have on the onehand the public interest of accessing theinformation when the search term is the nameof the individual. that is the right-- thatis the interest, rather, that is at stake.

when the individual whose nameis the search term, the term is that the information isobsolete, out of context, or inaccurate. well, having said that, i thinkthere are two major areas here. two differentpossible solutions. first, the right of removalwill be applicable only when the results areinaccurate-- obsolete or inaccurate, consideringthe legitimate interests of the public to accessthat information.

so from that point ofview, when this information has a public interest-- acontemporary public interest-- in this case,personal data are not either inadequate or irrelevantor impertinent or inappropriate or obsolete, because thereis a current public interest. in that case, thatcondition is not met. so in order todetermine that there is a current publicinterest, well, this is very different, avery difficult ruling

to make, because thereis information which is relevant for the publicinterest, for self-government, for democraticparticipation in general, to make peoplecapable of performing a number of activities--public health information, public information on differentaspects such as the auction of real estate propertyas a result of the debts. only the publicorganization, as it is the case withthe costeja case.

and this informationhas a public interest, because it serves the publicinterests of government bodies, and the interests of the publicto participate in this auction, to access this property. so this information has acurrent public interest. there is no basis to fund, tosupport the right of removal, because there are public--in current public interest behind the search toaccess that information. i don't think it is necessaryfor the search engine

to reject theserequests, to paint a very fine line betweenwhat is a public interest and what is not inthe public interest. if the information is currentand is legitimate-- or at least not blatantly elicit--the public interest is taken for granted. as a result of theexercise of freedom of expression, publicpowers, official information, or on whatever other grounds.

if the information is currentand legitimate, or at least not blatantly illicit, because itis contrary to the criminal code or to fundamental rights ofpeople's honor or privacy-- if it's not clearly illicit,it is taken for granted that there is a public interestand these requests should be rejected. there would be no rightof removal in this case, because the conditionsare not just there. in this case, ifthe information is

pertinent, appropriate,non-obsolete, et cetera, the right to be forgotten--recognizing the ruling-- is in the case of informationin which there is not a current public interest. informations which after acertain while have become obsolete and referto the past events. and we should distinguish herebetween two groups of people-- private individuals,which are not public figures, in the wordsof the european court of human

rights. i don't know if thiswould be applicable to us. well, maybe in my case, i'mnot a public personality. but i think private individualsdo have a legitimate interest, which is recognizing the ruling. when a third partyexercises what we would call the digitalgossip-- in other words, put in your name or snooping, putin your name on the search bar, well, all the datawhich are clearly

obsolete and non-current shouldbe removed from the search results, because thereis no public interest. is it possible forpublic interest to prevail on theaccess of information? not in case of a privateindividual, in my opinion. let's talk about the mostcontroversial cases-- for instance, eventswith criminal relevance, criminal sentences. for instance, an individualhas committed a crime

and has served his sentence. after that, of course, hehas a legitimate interest in returning to society andnot being stigmatized because of what he has done in the past. that is part ofthe core of what we could call personal autonomy. so irrespectiveof the seriousness of the crime-- and i willqualify that statement in a minute-- i think thatprivate individuals who commit

crimes, if there is nota current public interest on that information,they are entitled to have removed thatreference to linger about the crime he or shehas committed in the past. some wonder what would happenin the case of criminals against humanity. well, what is the mostprevalent interest? their interest notto be stigmatized for what you've done inthe past, or the interest

of the community not toforget what has happened. i think this type ofcrimes has clearly committed, as aresult of our history, to pay special treatment tospecial crimes of genocide, such as the holocaust,for instance. but of course, ifwe start by saying, well, we can maintainthe link to sentence, and even though ithas been fully served, if it's a case ofgenocide, for instance,

i think this could well putus in a very dangerously slippery slope that we donot know when will end. but i think that europeis such a special case that it would be justifiedto maintain that link, even if the criminal is aprivate individual then. but the community has the rightto not forget, to remember, so that these crimesdo not occur again. a second group would be thepublic personalities-- people who have publicresponsibilities, who

for their professionor position, are in the public limelight--artists, politicians, et cetera. in this case, past informationwith no current relevance about these individuals,i think that the interest of the public toaccess information-- past information-- prevails. in cases, such a term is thename of those individuals. well, hypothetically, thereis no current public interest.

but maybe past events maylead to a current event, even though thepolitician in question might no longer bein the public sphere, or hasn't really retired, forinstance, because this allows the community to debateabout standards of behavior, or the standardsof conduct that we demand from publicpersonalities. i think, therefore, thatpublic personalities, because they havea public position

or because they have an impactin these case, the interest of the public to access thatinformation would prevail. let's mention an example-- forinstance, a politician who, at a certain point intime, has an affair with another individual,a private individual. that information has apublic interest at the time, even though it has animpact on the privacy, but well, of course, iknow the spanish law. i don't know aboutall the national laws,

but i think thefreedom of information prevails on rights ofprivacy of these individuals. after a certaintime, the person who has been engaged inthis affair, he's legitimately interested inhaving that link removed from a search, because itis of no current interest any longer, in which caseit should be removed. but that would be the caseof a private individual. the politician, eitheractive or retired,

cannot make that claim, becausethere is a public interest to access that information whenyou key in the name of that person to make a search, becausethere was a public personality, a public figure, even thoughhe or she may be retired now. so the key elementhere, the key factor, is the currency ofthat information-- whether the information inquestion is current or not. and the burden of proof toshow that the information is no longer currentor relevant, is

borne by the claimant,who should provide all the information necessaryfor the search engine to decide that theinformation in question is no longerrelevant or current. and to conclude,i'd like to refer to some procedural issues. google, at the present time,informs information editors of the removal of somelinks as a consequence of this right to be forgotten.

and that information,that communication, is not considered orprotected by the ruling of the europeancourt of justice. probably, they were consideringthe notice and take-down procedure in thedigital millennium act that deals with copyright andintellectual property rights. but this arrangementis quite automatic. the search engine-- imean, there is a triangle. we have the editor of thepage that has some copyright.

then we have thecopyright holder, and then we havethe search engine. so that notice and removalprocess makes a lot of sense, in that arena. so once the right holdernotifies the search engine that his or her copyrightis being violated or is being misused, the searchengine will remove the link and inform the editor of thatpage of what has happened. the editor isentitled to present

his or her argumentsagainst that removal. and those arguments are passedon to those the right holders. if the right holderdoesn't react, the link will be reinstatedafter an x period of time. however, in this case,regarding our subject matter, we're talking notabout a triangle, but about a bilateralrelationship. the search enginesupposedly protects the public's rightto access information

using the search engine. and on the other hand,we have the claimant, the person who's been affected. what about the person whoedits the information. what's his legal status? well, it has not been clearlydefined in the data protection act or in any othergeneral regulation. so that information,that notification sent to the editors,in my opinion,

is not contemplated orprotected by this ruling. and regarding the executionand the implementation of the ruling, inmy opinion, it would require that searchengine managers establish some cooperation with publicauthorities in the area of data protection to come upwith reasonable solutions in the framework i've proposedor in a different one. nevertheless, cooperationamongst search engines and publicauthorities-- which are

after all, responsible ofprotecting citizens rights, i believe that corporationis essential, in any case. eric schmidt: do we have acouple of quick questions from our panel? speaker 2: thank you. i have just one veryquick question, ok? because many times we referto the term public figure or public individual. could you please,sir, try to define

for us what do you mean by that? how you can define the publicfigure or public personality? interpreter: when a publicfigure or personality, according to ourcase law and also that of the europeancourt of human rights-- according to that,we are referring to those people who holda public position, who are in the publicsphere voluntarily, who have assumed this risk.

they know that their liveswill be in the limelight, because they have voluntarilystepped into the public arena. this also includes professionalsin the world of politics, professionals who benefitfrom public attention, such as artists, and who actas role models in a society. these criteria, of course,should be further specified, because they're verygentle criteria. but if i am not mistaken,google has provided some answers to the workinggroup of article 29

regarding the implementationof this ruling. and the manager ofthe search engine himself knows what thedifference is, or uses, or makes a differencebetween public individuals and private ones. so private persons should, intheir pages or in those pages-- they should warn usersof the possibility that some informationabout that person might have beendeleted or removed.

however, if yoursearch term is the name of a very well-known personsuch as mariano rajoy or felipe gonzalez or another spanishpolitician, or actor, or anyone who has publicresponsibilities-- so the search engine itself hasor follows some criteria, which perhaps could bethe level of attention or the number of searchesusing a specific name. and that provides uswith a lot of information about the person, whether he orshe is a public person or not.

frank la rue: [speaking spanish] interpreter: twoquestions to ask. sometimes it's difficult toagree on the right terms, or we use differentterms sometimes. we mentioned rightsthat do not exist. we use expressions that have ahigh impact, such as the right to be forgotten, whichdoes not exist as such. or the right to regret. however, we do mention theseterms in our discussions.

and yet there is another term. we talk about informationthat's obsolete or irrelevant. what is irrelevant information? we heard before that we mightfind thousands of irrelevant data as historians--data which, when they're put together andchecked and compared, provide us with awindow on history. so when is information obsolete? when is information irrelevant?

and secondly, oneof the speakers mentioned that genocide was oneof the main concerns in europe. i mean, one of its main concernswas to check the information, but genocide issuesare equally serious outside of europe, such as,say, in rwanda or guatemala and other countries in the worldwhere genocide was committed and crimes againsthumanity, such as people who disappeared in spainduring franco's time. i was going to mentionthat in my presentation.

i just wanted tomake it very clear that in the areaof human rights, we know that theright to be forgotten can be used to dodgeany punishment. interpreter: well,thank you very much. i would like to apologize if mywords have been misunderstood. i was referring to asingularity in europe that has to do with thelimits imposed on freedom of expression when it comesto dealing with reports

and articles thatdeny the holocaust. and that's a european--i mean, that's a specific element in europethat doesn't exist in the us. that has a lot to do withour own history, of course. of course, those peopleinvolved in genocide should never have theright to be forgotten, because it's much more importantto protect the community's right to accessthat information, even if thoseinvolved in genocide

have served their sentence,because the seriousness of their crimes is much moreimportant than the right even if those peoplehave a stigma, because if they havea stigma, of course, that crime won'tbe committed again. when is a piece ofinformation current? well, in the caseof mario costeja, the auction of somereal estate is no longer current news whenthe process is over,

when the real estatehas been sold, or when the debthas been repaid. and this is to be provenby the claimant, who has to prove that theinformation is indeed obsolete. but of course, circumstancesneed to be taken into account. that's a key element. but the burden ofproof, initially, when it comes to proving thatthe information is obsolete, falls on the claimant-- onthe person requesting removal.

jose-luis pinar:[speaking spanish] interpreter: very briefly now,you have made some proposals, and you've also said thatthe ruling refers to searches that are based ona person's name. of course, the ruling refersto those searchers in line with the question posedby the spanish audiencia national or highcourt of justice, because the europeancourt will only analyze the issues presentedby the spanish court.

that's why they have notanalyzed or described the position of thepublisher-- because they didn't say anything aboutlavanguardia in the ruling. you've made veryinteresting proposals. do you think googleshould also, in spite of what the ruling says, shouldalso take into account removal requests or applicationsbased on search terms which are no longer thename of the person, or not only thename of the person?

search terms that referto a specific person. i mean, if you key in thechairman of a company, there's only one chairmanof that company, of course. interpreter: we'll haveto look at this on a case by case basis, but the rulingstates that the search engine has a significantimpact on the rights to protect your own personalitywhen results are based on the search ofthe person's name. because the search pace,be it the first one

or the seventhone, will show you an aggregated view ofthe information published around that person. a more or less detailedprofile of that person's life, biography. and this is what theyconsider to be specially or potent detrimental tothe rights of personality, to protect your own personality. so the key element is thatthere is no absolute right

to be a digital snoop. if the information iscurrent, of course, we're all entitled to accessthat information in a search engine, keying inthe person's name. if the information isobsolete, on the other hand-- if the person is a publicperson, as i said before, i believe the public interestto access that information prevails, even if they justuse the name of a person who used to be famous or who'sstill a public person.

but this should not beapplied to a private person when the information inquestion is obsolete. and that's a fundamental,very important element. i don't believe theenforcement of that ruling should go beyond that. the key element, in myopinion, is the search term-- whether it was theperson's name or not. eric schmidt: 10 minute break,bathroom break, for everybody. and this is a good time tofill out your question cards

for the audience. so we'll come backin a few minutes. thank you, panelists. thank you, experts. eric schmidt: ok, iwant to thank everybody for sticking with us forour second act, which is going to be asexciting as the first act. what's exciting is that webegin with alejandro perales. he is the president of theassociation of communications

workers and herepresents a spanish sort of consumer and users counciland several organizations, including the consultativecouncil of the spanish data protection authority andthe intellectual property commission. mr. perales, wouldlike to begin? alejandro perales:thank you very much. thank you for this opportunity. and congratulations for thismeeting, i'll speak in spanish.

interpreter: ok. i am here representingthe association of communication users. it's an association thatupholds the rights of citizens and consumers in the area ofthe right to be forgotten, which soundswonderful, actually. the right to be forgotten--it sounds very romantic, doesn't it, as some othershave mentioned before me? however, in this area,we always find ourselves

in a very unclear situation. because we defend acitizen's right to privacy, on the one hand, theright to protect and own your personal data. but at the same time,we uphold other rights-- the right of people toknow, and to find out, and to access information--the right people have to receive and disseminatetruthful information. and we're also concernedwith a possibility

that this right to beforgotten may be a right to be blameless, tododge some issues. so we always tryto strike a balance based on a case-by-caseassessment of the most important, or prevailing,or crucial right. i won't be referringto the regulation or to legal questions, butrather to conceptual issues. so based on this concernwe have in my association, i'd like to tackle someof the issues raised

in previouspresentations, which i have found equally interesting. considering theknowledge of the people who have made thosepresentations, it's a question of strikinga balance, as others have mentioned before me-- a balanceamongst different rights-- the right to privacy,the right to data protection, which is a verypersonal right, indeed, that can be exercisedby citizens, themselves.

and then we also havethe right to information, a right that has a socialgeneral-interest element, which makes it different from thefirst right i've mentioned. we may all agree on theruling of the european court of justice, since ittakes this balance into account-- the rightto access information, the right to find outabout information, and also the rightto be forgotten. we need to strike a balance,which is not necessarily

at the center of these elements. the solution is not atthe geometrical center of all these rightsi have mentioned. this ruling considersthat privacy-- the right to privacy-- ismore important than the right to information. the ruling apparentlyconsiders the right to be forgotten more importantthan your legitimate rights. and it grantslegitimate interests

to some service providersin case of primary services. however, secondaryor tertiary services are not granted such alegitimacy, up to the extent that the ruling grants rights tocontent editors, which are not granted to search enginesin the context of the right to be forgotten, non-indexation,or removal of certain contents. there is a veryimportant aspect, as far as we're concerned. when we talk about theright to be forgotten,

we have a number ofelements indicating the quality of the data andthe quality of those rights. and i believe we are focusing ona specific type of information, or data, which are notusually questioned regarding their truthfulnessor completion. we're talking hereabout data protection. initially, in the areaof data protection when the information wasmistaken or untruthful, there was legal protection.

but in this case, we'retalking about truthful, precise information which, forone reason or another, is considered to be notfit for dissemination. and we face herean obstacle that has to do with a specific case. because there are plenty ofelements around these cases. i mean, what kindof arguments can you present to request thatyour data be removed? we may be requesting thatthose data be removed

or at least pushed to thesidelines to somewhere where it's moredifficult to find them. so it's not that theinformation is not relevant. it is not truthful. we're talking aboutinformation that's not current. what's current information? well, a currentpiece of information may refer to an informationthat's being made public today or that is now availableto the public in general,

even if the event tookplace in the past. it may also bereferring, this right to be forgotten, to data whichare no longer relevant for one reason or another. we're talking here about asea of very complex elements that need to be takeninto account when deciding that a piece of informationshould be removed or taken out of the public space. mostly, we'retalking about people

who want to exercise theright to be forgotten in the face of apiece of information that might bedetrimental for them. of course, we have differentcases or different applications to remove information. in some of those applications,the right to honor on the right to privacy are atstake and not so much the right to own yourpersonal data, which is not one of the most substantiveor important elements

in this discussion. so in this context,it is essential, as others have pointed outbefore me, to take something into account apartfrom the truthfulness of that information. i take truthfulnessinto account. otherwise, we'll be talkingabout a different issue. but there is another elementto be taken into account-- the social relevance ofthat information, which

is equally complex. what's a relevantpiece of information from a social perspective--from the perspective of its public interest? an important pieceof information is not the same asan interesting piece of information. for the publicopinion, some elements might be tremendouslyinteresting.

nevertheless, thoseelements may have no scientific, or historical,or political relevance. so even if we have alot of public interest for some specificdata, we should know that that informationis protected by the right to be forgotten, or not. we're, after all, referringto the public life of a public figure. public figures also havea private life, of course.

in some cases, the publicand private spheres of that person's life may bethe same, but not in every case. we should also takeinto account the nature of the event that'sbeing described in that information or data. and that might change with time. because society's tastes andprinciples change with time. but if you're tryingto, as we are, upholding citizens' rightsfrom a twofold prospective--

citizens as owners of theirown personal information and also citizensas subjects that are entitled to accesspublic information-- it is not an easy subject. it's very complex. so in my opinion, it shouldbe resolved and settled based on the input from as manypeople and organizations as possible. it's not a question of passingthe hot potato, as it were.

it's not a question of havingothers make a decision. it's a question ofestablishing some cooperation with stakeholders,as broad as possible. so who's responsible to satisfythis aspiration of a right to be forgotten? there's a very positiveelement in the ruling. the responsibility of thedifferent stakeholders in the value chainis recognized. i'm referring to theinformation society.

we've always believedthat search engines should have some responsibilityor liability in the area of data protection. so that part of the ruling, inour opinion, is very positive. but it takes us back to theparadox i mentioned before. we've always wantedsearch engines to have some liabilityor responsibility. however, afterreading the ruling, it looks as thoughsearch engines

are the only ones responsiblefor processing and dealing with those data. why? as jose luis mentionedbefore, the court of justice only looks at theissues that were raised. no one asked questions aboutthe publisher or editor. that's why the ruling doesn'tmention their liabilities. but if society wants toimplement some criteria, all aspects need tobe taken into account,

and not only those raisedby the audiencia nacional, in this case. let's say that the person whomakes that content available-- if that person is taken outof the decision-making chain, what's going to happen? i mean, search enginesare the bottleneck in the developmentof communications and the digital world. and efficacy orcould skyrocket--

could be much greater-- ifthis bottleneck disappears. but what about the person whomakes that content available? that person should havebeen taken into account. so if you want to requestthe right to be forgotten, it's not only the searchengine that's involved. the person who made thatcontent available or that might have waived or transferredthat content to a third party should have also beenmentioned in the ruling. and there is a level oflegitimate interests recognized

in the ruling in thecase of the editor, which is mentioned in theruling, actually. but the search engine,according to the ruling, has a legitimate interest,which is economic in nature to generate profits. but the serviceprovider is recognized other duties-- i mean, theprotection and the preservation of that publicinterest information. if the editor had beentaken into account,

some of the problems you'vementioned would not exist. if you provide informationto those editors, you may be violatingthe right to privacy. but this is somethingthat can be solved. so who should bethe one deciding whether those applications areto be accepted or rejected? first of all, we haveto take into account the fact that theproblem is tremendously complex and complicated.

it's not that one rightprevails over the others. it's not that we're talkingabout untruthful or obsolete it's not that we are referringto doubtful information transferred to third partieswithout authorization. in those cases, we have aset of tangible elements that makes it possible for thestakeholders to make decisions. but in this case, theinformation is indeed truthful. the decision is left in thehands, not of only one party, as we see in the dataprotection regulation

according to whichthe decision is up to those who manageand upload the data. but in this case, the rulinglays the responsibility to decide on the handsof a third party. you have to analyzethe content that perhaps should beforgotten or not. and this decision is left inthe hands of a third party that had nothing to dowith having made this informationavailable on the internet.

the responsibilityis given to someone who has to take so many elementsinto account when it comes to the right to beforgotten that it would be impossible to do a right job. in my opinion, google hasprovided a reasonable response to this issue. i'm referring to the settingup of the advisory council. but for someone suchas my organization, upholding citizen rights,we still have some concerns.

if there is a doubt, you willjust de-index the content. apparently, this is easierand has fewer implications-- de-indexing thespecific content. in principle, itseems to be simpler to de-index the specificcontent than to do the opposite. and this, of course, maylead to the disappearance of a huge amount ofinformation and data that might prove to be veryuseful, as we heard before. so this is one of our concerns.

and finally, anotherof our concerns has to do with messagesto be disseminated. the information to beprovided to citizens regarding the removal or deletionof certain contents should be complete enoughand general enough so as not to violate therights to privacy. so i believe thatthe model developed by the advisory councilis the right model. but perhaps we should lookfor other models based

on collaboration so thatthe right to be forgotten would be decided by many moreparties, social organizations, and also the regulator. regulatory authorities shouldplay a much more active role. in my opinion, they shouldplay a much more active role, not just limited to makingsure that the removal has taken place. they should be involvedin the decision. eric schmidt: thankyou. [inaudible]

take questions from the panel. yes, frank, go ahead. go first. interpreter: --or in probablyused by third parties. but rather, thisis at the request of an individual whorequested to remove some data. and i think thatthe court of justice only needed to ruleon the search engine. because theinternet, in general,

covers both a searchfor information. but they just spedup the process through the new technologiesin the search engines-- sped up the process ofinformation search. these are newtechnologies, which are sometime along the line. but they do not really affectthe content of the right to search for information, whichis one of the basic rights. so as you've saidbefore, you don't

think that there is a dangerof these limitations becoming some sort of an acquired right. in other words,that people should request that the informationis removed-- past information-- just because it might beconsidered as inadequate. wouldn't that be a threat forthe freedom of information? wouldn't that be a threatfor the new technologies to exercise these rights? i'm a staunchdefender of privacy.

i think we must strengthenprivacy and set clear rules. but one thing is tostrengthen privacy. it's very differentfrom the way individuals can access and managetheir own information and how can theseaffect their rights? alejandro perales:[speaking spanish] interpreter: yes, well, ingeneral, i agree with you. but i think the fact thata piece of data disappears is not the same as theright to remove information.

because we're talking about theright to remove information. but there are differentdegrees, of course. data may disappear. or data may bedifficult to access. or the content maycontinue to be available. so maybe the entitiescould access content through a broad cg, which is nota universal access procedure. so they can have access tothat piece of information. and there are different degreesto the right to be forgotten.

there is a rightto be forgotten. and then there aredifferent degrees in the difficulty that you canhave in accessing these data. that's why we're concerned. because we are concernedabout the very term "right to be forgotten." because apparently,we are victims of a good term--a good idea, which might be more misleadingthan anything.

i would prefer aright to suppression, right to diminish a rightto access that information. because at the end of the day,this is what we are discussing. but if you consider thatevery individual owns his own personalinformation, he is entitled to decide whetherthis information made available or not. but there is a thingcalled universal access. and the right to be forgottencannot become the right

of impunity. that's why it's important thatthe ultimate decision should strike the right balancebetween both interests. and it might beneutral agents, which are not biased towards deletingor maintaining the content, who should have a say on whatis the ideal solution-- re-indexation, de-indexation,or disappearance of the data altogether. there are different degrees,as i have said before.

eric schmidt: yeah, go ahead. interpreter: well,following up on that. during the break, wementioned that there are some contradictions. because in criminal law,it is perfectly legitimate that someone who is triedand sentenced for a crime did the time andreturns to society, he is entitled to be fullyreinstated in society. but those who work forchildhood rights, for instance,

claim that this is not violatingthe case of pedophiles, for instance. in cases of sexualabuse, for instance, the interest of the girlsor the other minors abused prevails over the rightsof the person sentenced for these crimes. so there is a gray area there. interpreter: well, this isa very, very complex issue, indeed.

but apart from the fact thatcrimes might have prescribed leverage the statuteof limitations, there are other factors,such as the current nature of the information. some hold that society needsto be informed and be prepared and be in a position to preventfuture aggressions, in the case of a pedophile, asyou've mentioned. but of course, the de-indexationof some information does not necessarilymean that these material

would be completely removed. and for someone wholaunches a search, a specific searchmay have access to that piece of information. because the data itself mightnot been completely removed, only the indexationof that information. peggy valcke: mr.perales, i would like to ask you the following. we have already heard aboutthe possible negative effects

of an implementationof the so-called right to be forgotten forhistorical reasons and for the freeflow of information. but as you representordinary citizens, a lot of requests--at least people who contact me personally--about this possibility now to ask to havecertain links removed are ordinary citizenswho have been confronted with idle gossip, orpeople who don't mean well.

and that negativelyaffects them. because when they talk withcolleagues or with neighbors, people look a bit strange. for those ordinary citizens whodon't have the financial means to hire online reputationmanagement services to have their data processed onlinein the way they would like to see fit, don't youthink that the court ruling has positive effects? is this something whichhas been discussed

within your organization? and a second shortquestion-- to what extent do you think that nationalspecificity should be taken into account? do you consider it moreappropriate to come up with an eu-wide solution? or do citizens havedifferent sensitivities in different eumember states, which should be takeninto account when

dealing withrequests for removal and accepting orrejecting those? interpreter: well, let meanswer your last question first. i think that data protectionand european regulation would be very beneficial. because it wouldcreate a much more harmonized, legal framework. and i hope that thenew regulation-- we'll see how it rolls out.

but i'm sure it will takethese aspects into account. but in general, ouropinion about the ruling was quite positive. first of all, because we thoughtthat some citizen protection rights have been upheld. and these went a little bitbeyond the classical rights. because the issuehere is not checking the accuracy of thedata, but rather the fact that these datahad been weighted, or was

appropriate, or proportionate,or current, or relevant. so we thought it waspositive that this was regulated somehow. and of course, we alsofound it very positive that a certain partof the liability was placed on the handsof the search engines. i think that forthe common citizen, the ruling is quitepositive as it stands now. because it allows fora fast and smooth way

to request and be grantedthe right to be forgotten on issues which mightnot be very relevant, but which may be harmfulfor his private life. and i think thatit's only natural that those who makethis content available should have someresponsibility, some liability, and in this instancemay be entitled to request a removalfrom the medium which has made theinformation available.

but having saidthat, let me stress that i think thisis a very, very beneficial ruling forthe common citizen. the question is quite simple. i wasn't quitesure whether i got some of the points youmade entirely clear. you rightly stresscomplexity and the need to strike a balance. so the questionis the following.

do you think that thecurrent decision taken by the european court ofjustice strikes that balance? interpreter: i'vetalked about balance. but it's a very unstablebalance, if you like. but balance is notjust the center of gravity or the needle point. it's an unstablebalance that must weigh all of thedifferent elements. every ruling hasa positive effect

in terms of recognitionof a number of facts. but i think there is a lot ofroom for further consideration. and i don't think thatthe ruling has established a framework-- a legalframework for the right to be forgotten because ithas neglected two aspects. first, it has nottaken into account all of the agents in thevalid chain in the information provision service. and, secondly, and thisis yet another paradox,

it gives great powerto a third party, which might have not been verykeen on getting this power. but it has been grantedan enormous power on the settlementof the content. and i am referring to thesearch engines, of course. and i think this iscompletely inadequate. eric schmidt: let's move quicklyto mr. pablo lucas murillo de la cueva. he's a magistrate at the supremecourt of spain and professor

of constitutional law with astrong academic background. and he's participated inmany debates on the right mr. murillo. pablo lucas murillo:[speaking spanish] interpreter: thank you. first of all iwould like to thank google for theirinvitation to participate in this session ofthe advisory council. i would like to present a numberof ideas, which are strictly

personal, but nonetheless,i have had the chance to discuss them professionallyand academically in the past. i also want to thank youfor having invited me to this meeting becausei'm listening to very, very interesting opinions fromextremely qualified people on a subject which is of greatinterest to me, of course. the relevance ofthe ruling issued by the european courtsof justice last may has a great impact.

of course, the proofof that is this meeting we're holding here todayat the behest of google. and, of course, ever sincethe ruling was published, it has been widely coveredand discussed by the media. i think that the ruling isvery good news in general because through that rulingthe european courts of justice have given us a view of theright of data protection, which is much more balancedand much more concerned about personal protection.

and it has taken a veryfirm stand on a right, which until now more than it hadbeen implemented in case law. . and i think that theluxembourg ruling is in line with the principlesof protection of personal data, whichwere then drafted back in 1981 by the council ofeurope in convention number 208. and this is a framework inwhich we are currently moving. but the new aspect is thatthese ideas, these principles, are being implemented onto a newcontext, the context of search

engines on the internet,which was unheard of in 1981 and in 1985 when the europeanunion directive on this matter was issued and enacted. so as i said before,this ruling is positive because it strikesa good balance in the realm ofpersonal protection. and i think this rulingtransfers to the digital world the effects oftime and distance. and these have foundlegal translation

in very different spheres,such as in the criminal realm, the cancellation offiles, the reincorporation of former inmates to society,or even the very concept of rehabilitation. these conditions have beenabsent from time and space because in the digitalrealm apparently time and space do not havethe same bearing on realities as was the case in the past. the concept of thisruling is based

on the fundamentalcharter of universal rights of the european union. and the rulinginterprets content from later activities notwritten in its own terms but, in my opinion, fallswithin the material significance of these terms. so in my opinion,the luxembourg courts conducts a constitutionalinterpretation in as far as it's based on the charterof fundamental rights, which

is part of the europeanunion constitution. and this is veryimportant, of course, because the conclusion is drawn. and this litigationdoes not have to rely on thechanges on their own whatever thelawmakers have to say, of course, in the lastversion, the last draft of the european unionregulations drafted in march. it continues to regulate theright not to be forgotten,

but the right offsuppression, which i think is a more appropriateone because the right to be forgotten may bemore romantic sounding, more evocative. but it might well be misleading. therefore, theseadditional-- the ruling-- is a result of aconstitutional interpretation. and this is not a coincidencebecause, in my opinion, the right to dataprotection was already

present in a ruling fromthe luxembourg court one month earlier in the caseof the european directive on the withholdingof data associated with telephone communications. and it ruled them asinvalid, once again, upon the basis of thecharter of fundamental rights so this upholds thisnew approach vis-a-vis political power in the april 8thruling and vis-a-vis society-- society versus economicpower, in this case, google.

and it's a ruling whichwas quite unexpected. and, surprisingly,on may 13, 2014, we found this ruling whichhas spectacular public impacts as we have seen. but i don't think this isa very isolated ruling. but it's the result ofa very deep reflection from the luxembourgcourt, which has taken a constitutionalapproach to the interpretation of this issue.

and this, in myopinion, should also be upheld by all of the europeanjudges for obvious reasons. javier mires has discussedthe ruling of the luxembourg court related to the searchengines, the search results, when the search term is thename of an individual, which produces results whichare not quality results according to the definition ofquality of the data protection regulations because theyare obsolete, inaccurate, or they have lost thelink to the purpose

of the original search. so the right to beforgotten is clearly the right to suppressthese links, which link to information whichhas been attained launching a search, using as a searchterm the name of an individual, and whose results areincomplete and obsolete and not of sufficient quality. therefore, this is nota case of censorship. the contents are notdeleted or removed.

and as javier hasbrilliantly explained the ruling alsoexplains why this is necessary from thepoint of view of the law identifying someonethrough a search page with data of not enoughquality exposes that person and presents a profileof that person, which does not fit reality. and which, i might add,in most of the cases may have verynegative consequences.

you might not have ajob or have credit. or he may not be able topurchase real estate property because this ruling isespecially protective of the common citizen--non- public personalities. so i think that theruling is very balanced. and i think that thesubstance of the ruling is to try to havesearch engines maintain the quality of theinformation they provide. and on this basis recognizesrights and obligations, rights

and duties-- duties being of thesearch engines and the rights applicable to theindividuals, of course, and the interestof the individual prevails over thoseof the search engine. and the interestof the individual prevails on publicinterest because we're talking about the common system. but the ruling isaware of the fact that some people do notfall into the common citizen

category-- public personalities. and that is where thereis room for an exception-- public personalities. but when the rulingwas issued, it just to continued on therulings of the lower courts when they have todecide on issues that are related tofreedom of information, the right to privacy, personalinformation protection because the profiles varydepending on whether it's

a common citizen ora public personality. and there aredifferences, of course. therefore, by the way,i agree with everything that javier mires has said. and he has been verybrilliant in his presentation. so i will conclude by sayingthat the main problems that need to be issued-- need tobe dealt with and resolved-- in case of requestfor removal has to do with the quality ofdata if these data are not

accurate or not upto date, they do not serve the purpose ofthe search and the data processing conductedby a search engine is legitimate, asthe court recognizes. but the legitimacyof that search must meet thecondition of preserving the quality of the data. and time is a factorhere, of course. even though the factthat the individual might

be a public figure, this mayserve as a basis for exception, but not in all cases becausepublic personalities, public figures, might berelevant for whatever reason. but they also have the rightto their own private life. but, of course, inthat case we will have to determine whatinformation is at stake, what has been the conduct ofthat person, why is he or she relevant, thereasons for the relevance in the habits, and the uses, andthe customs, even the culture

because what might be acceptablein one country regarding the conduct of apublic configure might not be acceptablein another country. maybe there isrelative uniformity in europe regarding that. but outside of europe theremight be a great differences because obviously whatpeople may claim-- they need the information they needregarding a public personality might not be the sameall over the world.

but, obviously, thereis also the balance here is tipped in favor ofthe common citizens versus the public personality. i don't think that historicalor scientific research might be detrimental to this asa result of these ruling because the ruling refersto currently living people. it does not refer tohistorical or past figures. but what's more important,sources are not deleted. the past is not re-written.

it just alters the wayto access information. and the same applies to dataon crimes, for instance. of course, there's acategory of crimes-- crimes against humanity, which do nothave a statute of limitation and which, therefore, maywarrant a different treatment-- maybe cases of pedophilia,et cetera, might also fall into that category. but these are exceptions. and they might requirea specific approach.

but once the sentenceis served, whoever has served the sentence isentitled to cancel his records and start a new life. so i don't think this isa especially complex issue from the point of viewof the legal principles. finally, if it is consideredthat the individual is entitled to the removal ofthe links, i think this should be applicable toall other versions of whatever search engine has been used.

it would make no senseto not have access to that information in europe,but having access to it in the us for obvious reasons. we live in a globalized world. and it should becompletely logical. finally, googleas a search engine would have to makedecisions and respond to the requests of individuals. but google should nothave the final call

because if the individualwho makes the request considers that he hasbeen unjustly treated, he will then that appeal tothe data protection agency and eventually toa court of justice. and at the end of theday, the courts of justice will have to rule on that,as it is only natural. normally, these decisionswill be the rulings are necessarily complex withthe exception of textbook cases, as we call them, which areso clear that no confusion is

this does not happentoo often in real life because there might be 1,000different shades of gray in every given case. so we'll have to judgespecifically on each case. but i think thatthe ruling equips us with rightful principlesand appropriate principles perfectly compatiblewith european laws. and thanks to the debates aboutthe rulings of april and may, further clarificationcan be made

and, hopefully, we can come upwith data protection rights, which are consistent forall citizens of europe and sets up a legalframework in which those who manage or producepersonal information may have a clear and stablelegal framework for that. eric schmidt: jose luis? would you like to start? and then we'll goto [inaudible]. jose-luis pinar: yes, thank you.

interpreter: yes, ofcourse, the discussion is becoming more andmore interesting. very briefly, i'd liketo refer to something you've mentioned when you talkedabout the european regulation of data protection, iwanted to refer or mention search engines. the regulation inmarch-- the draft of the regulationcoming out of parliament includes some amendmentsof the previous version.

amendments which, in my opinion,can be understood because this is a draft of theregulation that was published after the generalconclusions we've reached, but before theruling was published. the regulationreflects the doctoring developed by the attorneygeneral, the general advocate. the regulation, as it is today,doesn't fit into the ruling because accordingto the regulation there's a partythat's responsible.

and there is athird party, which is in line with theinterpretation of the general advocate. so i have a question here. the search engine--is it responsible for the processingor treatment of data? or would it be a third party? this is at the centerof the discussion. and i would like tomention another ruling

by the court of justice issuedon march, 2010, march the 23rd. it had to do with google france. and the issue had to do withintellectual property rights. and, literally, the court ofjustice states in that ruling, of course, it has nothingto do with data protection. but it says somethingthat's quite interesting. they are referring to thosewho provide reference services and it says thatthe search engine won't be liable for a violationof an intellectual property

right if it acts ina non-active manner-- if it acts passively justproviding information that's already there. however, if the search enginedoesn't play an active role, this is what the regulationsays, the party that supplies stored data is not liableunless the search engine is aware of the fact that thedata or information is not listed or illegal. so according tothis rulings, google

won't be responsible unlessit plays an active role or unless it isaware of the fact that the informationis not legitimate and it does not to remove it. according to the rulingby the court of justice, the legal nature of thosesearch engine changes. once we interpret thedirective literally, the search enginebecomes a liable party. and i would have loved toask one question of cecilia

about this. this is the crux orthe most important part of the discussion-- the legalnature of the search engine. is it a liable party or is itto be considered a third party? not to mention the links betweensearch engines and editors. but in the current draftof the regulation-- we look at theregulation as it is today-- the rulinggoes beyond it. interpreter: i believe you areright in your interpretation.

the regulation is basedon a previous version of the doctrine as it were. the latest draftof the regulation was published in march. and i believe the most importantchange took place in april. april and may--this is when we see a different interpretation--a new interpretation-- a relevant interpretation--legal interpretation. so this new ruling issued onmay the 13th strives to explain

and, in my opinion,succeeds in doing so-- explain why googleshould be considered to be the party that'sresponsible for the way the data are processed. in previous documents it wasstated that the search engine does process data andhas some liability. but the ruling goes beyondthat-- way beyond that. of course, it mentionsthe fact that google should abide by european law.

but it doesn't take theconsiderations of the general advocate into consideration,which of course brings us to a new doctrine. so the ruling willhave an impact on the legislative process. sabine leutheusserschnarrenberger: thank you. you mentioned two criteria--time and distance. are these the mostimportant criteria to find a systematic approachto implement the right

my first question. and the second one is shouldthe publishers have a right to be informed aboutthe removal of things? interpreter: i'll startwith the second question. the ruling doesn't thisexpress this as an obligation. it would be advisable. i do believe the regulationcontemplated something different. regarding time andspace or distance--

these two elements haveconditioned our lives in existence for many centuries. up until very recently,the passing of time meant that we tendto forget what happened 20 or 30 years ago. in roman times,the passing of time was an element that could beused to purchase property. so time was very efficientin removing information about a person'slife-- something

that took place in the past. and space is also avery important element. what goes on inmadrid was only known by people living in madrid, notin paris, or rome, or mexico city. however, informationtechnologies have done away with those twovery important factors that in the past removed informationfrom people's minds. and this is what we'retrying to recover

through the so-calledright to be forgotten. i don't believe thisis a recent expression. in publications20, 30 years ago, people did mention theright to be forgotten, considering thatautomatic data processing. i seem to remember that in 1983,the german federal court issued a very importantruling on the census. and i believe thisexpression was mentioned. when data are processedautomatically,

nothing can be forgotten. nothing is forgotten. perhaps you may beremoving some links, but nothing is forgotten. everything remains. it's just a question of knowinghow to access that information. jimmy wales: earlier you saidthat because the information, say a news article,is not deleted, but rather onlythe link to it is

deleted, that you wouldn'tregard this as censorship. would you similarly say that ifa particular book in a library offended someoneand the library were required to lockit in the basement and refused to tell anyonethat it's there, that this also would not be censorship? locking a book in the cellarbecause it offends some people would be censorshipin my opinion. but this has very littleto do with data protection.

it has to do withartistic creation and intellectualproperty and the right to honor and toyour own reputation. so problems of that sort. jimmy wales: inparticular, the predominant means that people use todayto get access to information is through search engines, inthe same way that they used to walk into the library andask the librarian for a book or look in the card catalog.

so how do youdistinguish that to say that the expression of "lavanguardia", the newspaper, is no longer about artistic,creative, political statement simply because some dataprocessing is involved? i don't understand how youbreak that apart intellectually. interpreter: of course you maypublish a piece of information in a newspaper or in abook or the digital world. but the content ofthat information may be found detrimentalby some people.

some people may considerthat information undermines theirreputation or fame. however, through asearch engine you may search the name of someoneand find an entry saying, mr. x is a scoundrel or acrook or not very clever. these are two different things. so when we receive applicationsto remove that kind of results found in the searchengine, it is to be seen whether the data havethe quality that they should

have according tothe regulation. but a book, a newspaper,or a digital newspaper, or a recording, imean, all of that will remain where it isif there is a legal suit. eric schmidt: thank youvery much, mr. murillo. in the interest of time,let's move to mr. hernandez. and we can bringin other questions as we can because we'rerunning out of time. mr. hernandez is a doctor of lawfrom the university of bologna.

and he's a professor[inaudible] of law at various universities[inaudible]. and he's been a director forthe public law department at the university of vigo. he works for theconstitutional court of spain. and he's a memberof the team that developed the researchproject data protection and extraterritorial applicationof rules, reform and the data production directive.

mr. hernandez, please proceed. juan antonio hernandez:[speaking spanish] interpreter: i would liketo thank the advisory council for theirkind invitation to share my opinionand my views. it is a pleasurefor me to be here because i've been able to listento very interesting opinions and ideas from highlyqualified professionals. what i'm about to say ismy own personal opinion

and has nothing to do with thatof the institution for which i work. so having saidthat, i would like to use the time i have availableto outline a basic idea and to refer very brieflyto two other ideas. i would like to start byreferring to the legal interest that a search enginemay be serving. every time there's anapplication for removal, we have to strike a balancebetween legal interests.

on the claimant side, of course,there is a fundamental right to be considered today afternational and international courts have statedthe capacity to decide on our personal data has animpact on the free development of our personality, not onlyour privacy and our image, but also our own personality. the link to a person'sdignity is very clear. and therefore, there'sa fundamental right to be considered.

it's equally clear--especially after the ruling by the court of justice-- thattime has an impact on this. and it may invalidate anexisting justification to remove the data. according to theruling, an advertisement announcing a foreclosuresale is no longer relevant once the debt has been repaid. the aim of thatnotification disappears once the debt is repaid.

and this idea canalso be applied to consent or anotherreason justifying the dissemination of apiece of information. it might be theperson's authorization. however, circumstancesmay change. of course, we knowexactly what legal rights favor the claimant, theperson requesting removal. but what about legal interests? when we considera search engine,

if the aims werejust individual, the courts willalways rule in favor of the person requestingdata removals. and according to thisruling, an economic interest in the case of the search engineis just an individual interest. a citizen may havecuriosity and may wish to access information usinga person's name in the search. and this is alsoconsidered to be a merely individual interest.

and i would go as far assaying that if you don't use the person'sname in your search, the interest wouldremain individual. curiosity doesn't equal a right. being curious doesn'tgive you any rights. however, there is avery different case, that of a search engine beingused for other purposes that go beyond the individual's fear. if this were the case, the legalinterpretation might change.

in other words, if usinga search engine today-- considering thedevelopment of technology-- is considered to be somethingessential in today's world to be properly informed. the legal approach will change. this is no longer a caseof someone being curious. it's a case of someone havingthe right to access information to exercise theirdemocratic right. therefore, the legalinterpretation might change.

in my opinion, this isthe most important element in the ruling. in paragraph 96, theruling acknowledges that search engines may playthis public interest role. they may play a role, makingpeople able to be informed. they may play the role of anymedium, a newspaper or a news agency. if you read paragraph 96-- i'mgoing to read it because it's very brief-- ibelieve you'll find

there are sufficient groundsfor this interpretation. it says the following,these rights-- it's referring tothe rights referring to your personaldata-- will prevail over any economic interestof the search engine and also over thepublic's interest to finding that information in asearch using the person's name. however, this wouldn't be thecase in some specific cases, such as a case where theclaimant is a public figure.

in which case, imean, this indicates that the search engine isplaying precisely this role. and then the legalinterpretation changes as a result of that. and by the way, i wouldlike to point out the fact that there is afunctional criterion that should guide any decisionto accept or reject removal applications. the content thatis to be removed,

does it serve anyof these purposes? i'm referring to theright to be informed or the right to informas an active stakeholder. or we may be referring tothe freedom of expression or to other legal rights,which are equally important. so i'd like to drawsome conclusions. based on thisgeneral criterion, we are unable to specify thetime period after which or during which a pieceof information or data

should be presentin a search engine. i mean, we will have toanalyze the reasons justifying the publishing ofthat information. do they still exist? have they disappeared? and this requires acase by case analysis. and, of course, not all of thedifferent elements considered are equally important. consumer protection-- this isjust my own personal opinion--

is not as valuable as a rightto information or freedom of expression. i would like tomention other example. there are other legal rightswhich are equally important but are nevertheless monopolizedby the state, such as law and order. of course, citizens areinterested in knowing whether someone is a criminal,if there is a risk of relapse. but that interest in this caseis monopolized by the state.

the state is responsiblewhen it comes to guaranteeing that that personwill not commit other crimes. since it's up to thestate to guarantee this, citizens are not so muchentitled to know exactly who has a criminal recordand who hasn't. and this functionalitycriteria could also be useful in another area. it can be used to definewhat a public figure is. a public figure is aperson whose information

is directly linked to oneof those legal interests that the search enginemight be serving. every time we have informationrelating to that person available, theperson is considered to be a public figure, even ifno one knows about that person. but perhaps informationabout that person is very important forthe purposes of freedom of expression andso on and so forth. so in that case,that person would

be entitled to request thathis information be removed. the source of thatinformation, in my opinion, is not a determiningfactor when it comes to deciding whetherthis functional criteria is efficient or not. when it comes todeciding that, there is an overriding need topreserve that information. some years ago in spain,we had a very serious fire. and some engineers wereblamed for that fire.

apparently, theyshould have established a different mechanism forfire extinguishing purposes. there was a blog. the university, the schoolof engineers had a blog. and they receivedhundreds of posts from many engineers mentioningthat the expert's reports used in the trial wereright or wrong. many people were veryunhappy with the authors of those reports.

and then the authors of thosereports, of course, complained. it's clear that therewas a public interest for all engineers and thepublic at large to access these opinions regarding theexpert witnesses reports. and a blog is not atraditional medium, but neverthelesscan be considered to serve a public purpose. so when we talk aboutremoving some contents, how should it be removed?

and for how long? of course, we have to considerthe territorial implementation of legislation. we want to enforce apiece of legislation to make sure that it is compliedwith in a specific territory. so we should make surethat in the territory where some legislationis enforced, preventing the publishingof some information. what i mean to say isthat we should have access

to that legislation. perhaps you'll find thatinformation in one country but not in another country. that's not really important. it's only a question of knowingwhether that information is still available or accessiblein the territory or country where its disseminationhas been banned. i don't believe that removingthat information- i mean the removal of thatinformation will

be efficient onlyin that territory where that informationhas been banned. to the directive on the servicesof the information society. there's a heading inthat directive dealing with the responsibilityof intermediaries or the reliability. and there's a specificlegal regime defined there that has been amply interpretedby different bodies. and the dataprotection directive

also mentions the personresponsible for data processing. and then we see theclash of two institutions bearing the same name. i don't really know if it'sthe same institution or not. they have the same name, butthey serve different purposes. we are either facing acontradiction to be sold. or perhaps we're talking abouttwo different institutions so that's all i wanted to say.

eric schmidt: mr. hernandez. and luciano, i think you had aquestion you might want to ask. are there other questions? eric schmidt: quickly. would you like togo ahead and start? luciano floridi: thiswas actually a follow on from [inaudible] question. so we've been talkingacross several presentations in terms of data processing.

and the definition that we haveof that particular specific and fundamental concept,it's, let's say, old. it goes back 20 years or so. so i was wondering whetherthe previous speaker or the last speakerwould like to comment on the following point. i have the impressionthat-- especially the previous speaker--consider a search engine a data processor.

anything can bea data processor. so that is almostinevitably true. i would like tounderstand-- if possible from the previous speakeror the current speaker-- whether they have aconcept of something that is not a data processor. for example, if i'm in thelibrary and i point to a book, am i processing data? because i'm indicatingwhere the book is.

interpreter: microphone please. well, thank you verymuch for your question. what is protected byfundamental rights is probably the developmentof your own personality. the fact that you havea data processor, that has no impact on thedevelopment of your personality. in that case, that fundamentalright is not affected. that right willbe undoubtedly, i mean, in as far as a searchengine gives you access

to some informationthat would be very difficult tofind otherwise. i mean, the fact thatyou have immediate access to that information, thatanyone can have access to that information,this could have an impact on anindividual's personality and the developmentof that personality. so to answer your question,not every data processing poses a serious risk regardingthe way i organize my life.

eric schmidt: arethere other questions? ok. shall we move to ourfinal-- mrs. dominguez. and it's worth saying a littlebit about mrs. dominguez. she is the spanish editorof the "huffington post". and she's alsothe vice president of the association ofeuropean journalists and a member of theinternational solidarity foundation.

she's previouslyworked as a journalist at different televisionand radio programs, having been, as well, a regularcontributor in radio and tv programs as a political analyst. you have the honorof the last session. so please continue. montserrat dominguez:and i'll try to keep it really, really short. i'm learning a lot.

and we journalists, we liketo use quotes when we speak. so i'll start withone, which is that news is something somebody doesn'twant printed, all else is advertising. interpreter: well,i'm not too sure whether this is a quote fromgeorge orwell, william randolph hearst because google hasnot clarified that for me. however, even though thequote is a little bit pompous, it's a quote that wejournalists are very fond of,

especially when we publishsomething which is not well received bythe powers that be. so it's pretentious. the quote is pretentious. i agree. but it is nonethelessquite accurate. i'm not a lawyer. i'm not a legal expert. and i'm not talking here onbehalf of anyone, not even

on media on which i work for. but hopefully my 30 yearsof experience in the media might prove to be helpfulin approaching this topic. i've done thousands ofinterviews during my life. and i have writtenmillions of articles. and, of course, i haveresorted to google because this is a wonderfultool to dig background of the people you aregoing to interview. and if you digdeep enough, you'll

find very relevant pieces ofinformation, very valuable, which might have passedunnoticed at the time but gain furtherrelevance as time goes by. as many public archives andfiles have been digitized, this has really helped alot the work of journalists. and the role of thejournalist is just to provide context towhatever information we have found ingoogle or elsewhere, to connect all thedots, and confirm

that the informationis accurate. so deleting, removing, orde-indexing the indexing information as an appeal tothe right to be forgotten runs contrary to the rights ofcitizens to access information. and it is contrary totransparency as well. and transparency issomething that we demand from ourgovernments, from our ngos, and from our institutions. in court rulings, theseare not easy to interpret

for the layman. and i think that these rulingssometimes represent a step back in the demand for transparency. obviously not allrequests from citizens that request the removal of someinformation about their lives runs contrary to the rightof information, of course. and the media are quiteused to handling requests from citizens who request theremoval of some information. way, way before theinternet and google existed,

citizens have cometo us traditionally to remove information which isno longer relevant or accurate. in which case we have alwaysanalyzed every particular case when it was just commonsense or in such cases the [inaudible] newspaper inits guide for professionals includes a section on theright to be forgotten. and these are thecriteria that are going to be usedwhenever [inaudible] sent some requests that someinformation be removed.

well, the informationwill never be completely deleted or removed. it will only be removedfrom the indexes. the criteria for beingover current value applies for the last 15 years. that informationshould be negative for the professional personallife of the applicant. and this would not beapplicable to cases judged in courts of justice orreferring to acts of violence.

and by the way, theonly proviso to all this is that the information mustbe accurate and truthful. otherwise, we would betalking about something else, of course. the media-- we haveour code of ethics. and we are duty-bound topublish accurate and truthful we tried to do so. of course, we made mistakes. when we make mistakes,we can rectify.

otherwise, courts of justicewill force us to do so. but who is entitled torequest the removal of a link to reliable information? i don't know whether--i want to know whether the major thati'm going to vote for has a dubious past of fraudor embezzlement or whatever. so some of that informationis perfectly current. i am referring to professionals,to judges-- to politicians. let me give you someexamples of what google

is doing with de-indexationof information. as far as i know,there are two companies in spain, at leasttwo, which are in the business of data removal. and they are absolutely happybecause businesses is booming, especially after the rulingof the court of justice was issued. and they claim that there areat least 200 politicians, seven banks, which haveafter the sentence

from the european court ofjustice ruling of last may have requested the removalof all of the information and these companieshave committed not to chargeanything unless they achieve a full deletion ofall of that information. and they also are committed toreplace inaccurate information with up-to-date "morereliable" information. these are the guardiansof the truth-- the self-appointedguardians of the truth.

and i'm sure that thesebusinesses will continue to thrive and grow in numbers. and, of course, thereare other organizations which will be more thaninterested in removing information suchas secret services of different countries. talking about rights of privacyand rights to regret-- there are contestants on tvreality shows and game shows who are now regretfulof having posed nude

for a magazine feature. and they wantthese photographs-- these pictures to be removed. so far, until the monthof july, 90,000 requests for the removalof images had been made and 200,000 urls,which have been removed. and i have few exampleshere because google-- and i would kindlyrequest google to do so-- informs themedia about these requests.

the only spanish medium whichhas provided voluntarily-- "the guardian" is doing it,bbc, "wikipedia" is doing it. the only spanish mediumwhich has referred to one deletedlink is elmundo.es, which publishes informationcoming from the efe news agency because ofembezzlement and prison with bail in the case of acouple of real estate company managers involved inreal estate fraud. the information waspublished in july, 2008.

it mentioned theruling of the judge and how some of thedefendants have escaped and fled the countryto avoid the justice. and this was a casewhich was suspended for a number of years. but it was reopeneda few years later. so i would like toknow who has requested this information beingremoved from google. and what is the criterionto accept this removal

being pertinent, appropriate,and perfectly current because the case is stillopen with the national court. well, of course, inthe media we always publish when someone isarrested and not always when he is acquitted. but the most ofprestigious media tend to do so and try tomake room in their papers for the amendmentsor rectification. "the guardian"published the news

in august, 2011 aboutthe post-it war in paris. i don't know if youremember the story. but it's really funny. the people working in thefinancial and economic district of paris were growing bored. and so throughpost-its, they built some sort of graffitior paintings. and this was verypopular over the world. but this informationhas been removed.

i have tried to understandwhat is the reason? why would someone request theremoval of this information because this is completelyneutral-- completely safe information? no one could be possiblyharmed by the publication of this article. however, i thinkthat there might be companies that mightbe interested in removing any trace of whatever they don'tconsider as appropriate as part

of the information thatone can access by launching a search about thecompany in google. so i would kindlyrequest to google that they keep up the goodwork keeping the media informed about the news thatthey are removing. we do have tons of informationin the "huffington post"-- tons of informationabout large companies which may incur indubious activity. it but we neverpublish this news

because we don't havethe legal muscle. we don't have thepossibility to confirm the accuracy ofthat information. and therefore, we don't. but i think google mustbe very careful when it comes to implementingthese control measures. otherwise, i think thatcitizens will have to face and the media, ofcourse, will have to face an army ofpublic relations people

who have the task of removingany information which may be considered as detrimentalfor their companies, which will create informationgaps, if you like. i think, well, you mightagree that this is kafkaesque. i think this is a falsecourt ruling on a false right as the legal experts have said. but when it comes tomake these decisions, i would kindly request thatgoogle take on its role as a defender of thepublic transparency.

i know that this is notreally the mission of google as a business, as a company,but this is something that they now have to do todefend the public interest. and this council is part ofthat effort in my opinion. so i would kindlyrequest google to be very strict aboutanalyzing in depth all of the requests forremoval of information, especially in the caseof violence, corruption, public health, andhuman rights because i'm

absolutely convinced thatthese will be the cases that will generate the greatestnumber of requests to remove that information. please do not just remove theinformation automatically. i don't think googleshould have the only key to access thatinformation or not. i think it would beinteresting to know who is interested in trying toget some information removed. and i think the kafkaesquepart of all this

is that we continuedated to discuss this because i'm sure that people areworking now on reestablishing the last links and thejournalists will eventually find a way to thatinformation that someone is trying to conceal from us. eric schmidt: do we have anyquick questions from the panel? david drummond: i do. eric schmidt: david. david drummond: soi wanted to ask you.

what would your ideal process befor informing the press of any of these removals andallowing the press to participate in theprocess to figure it all out? tell us your ideal process. montserrat dominguez: ithink it would be a good idea to inform the media-- theeditors of the publishers. what you're doing rightnow it would be, i think, a good way to act. so let them knowwhat's going on.

and although it's complicated. and i'm not really sure whetherthe publishers or the editors will be willing to share withgoogle the responsibility of deciding whether informationshould be de-indexed or deleted maybe you shouldtry to talk to them and see whether for somespecific petitions that you have, you may decide listeningalso to what is the idea. because that will givealso original input. you will be ableto put in context

whether that informationis really relevant or not. let's not forget that i mightbe a private citizen right now. but i may become apolitician or an activist or a leader in 20 years time. and maybe i would be veryinterested in deleting what i did before in order tobecome a public person again or for the first time. so maybe that would be avery fruitful combination to be in contact with theeditors and publishers.

eric schmidt: peggyyou had a question. peggy valcke: yes, thank you. i thought it wasreally interesting that you stressed theimportance of search engines as a tool for journaliststo find information and to exercise theirright to information. how important isit for journalists to be able to be foundvia search engines? and how bad-- or is itreally that negative

that certain resultsdisappear from a list when you search for aname-- a specific name as long as the informationis still available and can be found by digginga bit further and adding extra keywords? so what impactdoes it really have on the freedom of expressionof the journalists? it would be good if youcould illuminate us on that. montserrat dominguez: allright, if you are a big media,

and you a biginvestigative department-- investigativejournalism-- you're going to have theresources because you belong to a big corporation. you're going to havethe resources to look for what you're lookingfor, even if it's not in google because you wouldhave other search engines or you will find your way. but i don't think that shouldbe only for big investigative

reporters to have accessto that information. sometimes there are citizenswho find that information. and those are thecitizens who alert us of the importanceof some data that we have missedin our investigations. and that's becomingmore and more open. since we publishour stories, listen to what our readerssay about the stories, and in online media wedo a lot of collaborative

reporting with people. so why should only journalistsor people who have the tools to look on through the back doorto look for that information? i don't think that's fair. eric schmidt: excuse me. jose-luis, go ahead. jose luis pinar:[speaking spanish] . interpreter: one of the aspectscontemplated in the ruling, and i agree by the way,is that the search engines

have been, despite themselves,been strengthened by the ruling because now they hold theposition that they did not before, namely, thefact that they are now the judges, the fools, phonycourts ruling on a phony rights as someone said before. it's just like a mirror. and we decide whatshould the mirror reflect and what it should not. and we have differentinterests-- freedom

of information and privacy. maybe the balancebetween the two is now the responsibility of thesearch engines, not only media. it should be the media. but the questionis the following. do the mass media take intoaccount data protection when they make adecision to publish some information or not? or is just thefreedom of expression,

freedom of information, theonly prevailing interest? and the protection of privateinformation is just an aside. montserrat dominguez:[speaking spanish] interpreter: well, i thinkthe prestigious media are very, very careful. we do not publishthe names of someone who has been arrested for acrime if it is not relevant. we always add theterm alleged when we refer to someone who has notreceived a judicial sentence.

we do not use full names. we use initials only. in other words,of course, we are concerned with thepublic interests. but we always protectprivate rights as well. and we tried to do so when iwas working for television. a woman called usbecause we were using this footage of this womanwho was going through a breast x-ray for this cancerprevention campaign or whatever.

and we had been using thesame footage for 15 years. this is just a trivial example. but, of course, wealways try to determine based on common sensewhat are the procedures that we must follow to upholdthe protection of privacy, even though sometimesthere are clashes between the right of informationand the right to privacy. eric schmidt: i thinkwhat i'd like to do. we've run way over.

but i think it'svery, very important that we have heard suchdetail from everybody. we have a fewaudience questions. right? and i'd like to startwith a quick answer. and the first questionfrom the audience is for you, mrs. alvarez. are you ready? so the questionto mrs. alvarez is

to what extent do you think thatthe sentence of the european court is not takinginto consideration third-party responsibilitiescontained in the lssi law and in the e-commerce directive? i'll let you definewhat llsi law is. interpreter: it has a lot todo with something alejandro mentioned before. if there is a difference or not,if there are different animals, the informationservices act deals

with e-commerce in spainand talks about the person responsible for data processing. the regulations are different. and they are based on differentlegal premises or principles. however, they have a commonlink as was made evident in the intellectualproperty legislation. and it's quite surprisingthat it was not mentioned in the ruling. the person responsible forintermediation services

if a search engine is notregulated in the e-commerce directive but it's regulatedin the spanish act, service providers who don't producecontent, who don't control that content actively, are notconsidered to be responsible if they're not aware of thefact that the information is to be removed. we haven't had time to dealin depth with data protection. but sometimes theremight be some rulings against this interpretation.

and we see differentinterpretations in the differenteuropean countries. some cases are self-evident. you don't need an order toknow exactly how to act. if there is a childpornography image, no one needs to be a lawyerto know that that's illegal. one of the mostimportant discussions had to do with a concernabout the implementation of a previouscensorship system that

would filter allcontents on the internet. the court of justicein a ruling mentioned before regardinggoogle france and then another sentence aboutlaureal and others. the rulings have followedthe same approach that the e-commercedirective they say is not creating any kindof censorship or monitoring that would be inviolation of the charter of fundamental rights--article 8 and article 10.

however, there is alink to data protection. but the ruling, inmy opinion, should have taken this into account. the spanish agency, however,took it into account. although the spanishdata protection agency didn't mention itin its questions to the europeancourt of justice. the only link inmy opinion would be when the service provideris aware of a removal request.

of course, we have ofcases which are clearly black or white such asthe case of pornography. in other cases, the opinionof the data protection agency would be necessary to determinewhether the application or request is to beimplemented or not. so eventually, wewill be relying on professional opinions. we would need some professionalsupport to make up our minds. as soon as you haveeffective knowledge

of the nature of thosedata, you are responsible. but there are many other partieswhich are not responsible whatsoever. they become responsibleonce they participate in a potential damageto a third party, i.e., when you are aware of theapplication having been filed. eric schmidt: so i havetwo more questions. and these are infact for our group. so anyone can answer this.

this is from billund gomez. if the criteria to removeinformation is the name, how can you obtain one'sright to be forgotten and the right to freeexpression of another person if they have the same name? in other words, if my name isthe same name as a terrorist-- i hope that's true ofno one in the room. who would you like toanswer that question? jimmy.

jimmy wales: my fatherhas the same name as i do. eric schmidt: butneither is a terrorist. jimmy wales: yeah, someterrible people tried to dox me, as they call it. and so they've publishedmy social security number, which is sort of an importanttax number in the us. only they've published myfather's tax number instead. well, it's only in avery obscure place. so no one really cares.

but i think it's a verycomplicated problem because a great manypeople have the same name as either a famous personor as just another person. i may not like itif it says about me that i'm a guitarplayer in a bar. if i'm an esteemedjudge or something, i might find that bad for me. whereas that person might say,well, don't call me a judge. that sounds terrible to me.

and i don't know how there's anypossible way of disambiguating those things. jose luis pinar:[speaking spanish] interpreter: in myopinion, all of this has to do with the rightto your own identity. of course, everyone hasa different identity . but from the perspectiveof data protection, as jimmy has just said, itwould be very, very difficult to come up with a solution.

but the right to be forgottenis a very personal right. it should never impacton third parties. no one should beentitled to request a removal of informationpertaining a third party even if you share the names. it's lucky that you share a namewith someone whose information is there on the internet. but no one should beentitled to request that information about athird party be removed.

perhaps that third party isvery proud of being a terrorist. and they want that informationavailable on the internet. they wouldn't liketo see it removed. i don't care ifyou share my name. i want that information there. so it would be upto that other person to request thatinformation be removed, not to the person whoshares that person's name. eric schmidt: let'shave our last question

from the audience. it's from ann zohuhero. the criteria to identifythe right to be forgotten-- are they applicableto the real life or are they specificto the internet? are there are two differentconcepts of personal identity, depending on the environment? and i believe she's referring toreal life versus the internet. can i be forgottenoutside of the internet

is the way i interpretthat question. who would like toanswer that question? luciano floridi:i'll give it a try. eric schmidt: luciano. luciano floridi:yeah, well, i think that the assumptionthat there is a distinction between thetwo is fast disappearing. so the question must have beenasked maybe by someone my age because we all live onlinelife, anyway, more and more so.

the impression thatwe have a right to be forgotten in reallife-- good old days-- where that was not even a right. that was a matter of fact. we were forgottenin a matter of days. and we would neverhave been remembered. none of us will ever beunless you kill kennedy. so the right to beforgotten in real life, yes, a matter of fact.

the right to be forgottenis a matter of internet, and therefore, online. but since the onlineand offline are merging, i'm afraid we'reseeing the online affecting the offlineprogressively. in a matter of years, therewon't be any difference. i hope this helps. eric schmidt: by the way,that's a very, very quick, thoughtful answer foran interesting question.

i wanted to first say tothe press, who are here, that we're going toask you all to gather. is it in the back corner, betsy? betsy: yes. eric schmidt: over there. there's going to be a separatepress meeting with members of the panel immediately afterwe finish in just a minute. so if the press couldgather in that corner. and you'll be takento a separate room

with the key membersof the panel. i would like to spend a minuteand just think our experts-- eight experts who spent alot of time preparing this. each person got about20 to 30 minutes of dialogue,discussion-- testimony. we ran over. but i think it wasvery important. we heard many different views. and i also want tothank our committee

for whom this is simplythe beginning of many days of listening and strugglingwith these incredibly important questions. and i think on behalfof google, and i think david speaking for you,this was very successful. we appreciate your time. and thank you allin the audience for being here all day. thank you much.

[applause]