The right to be forgotten is a fundamental right recognized in the European Union. The Court of Justice of the European Union interpreted Article 12(b) of the EU Data Protection Directive to include a right for people in the EU to request from Google and other search engines the delisting of links to articles from searches of their names if the articles are
- "inadequate, irrelevant or excessive in relation to the purposes of the processing,"
- "not kept up to date, or … kept for longer than is necessary."
For example, at the request of a woman in Italy, Google removed links to "a decades-old article about her husband’s murder, which included her name."
