EU Court of Justice · 13 May 2014
Google Spain (Costeja)
In plain English
A Spanish man wanted Google to stop showing, under his name, 1998 newspaper notices about the auction of his property to recover social security debts. The Court held that a search engine is a controller and can be required to delist such links, the origin of the 'right to be forgotten'.
What the court ruled
the operator of a search engine is obliged to remove from the list of results displayed following a search made on the basis of a person's name links to web pages, published by third parties and containing information relating to that person … even, as the case may be, when its publication in itself on those pages is lawful.
Related
The official text is quoted word for word from the English version of the source named under it; only the version published in the court’s own records is authoritative. The plain-English line is Fino’s own summary, not legal advice.