France’s data protection watchdog has rejected an appeal by Google over the application of the controversial ‘right to be forgotten’ law.

The Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés, or more simply “CNIL”, has upheld a decision it made earlier this year that says Google must apply the ‘right to be forgotten’ to all of its search engine domains, including the international Google.com domain.

The right to be forgotten was first recognized by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in May 2014, which ruled that people could ask search engines not to pull up links to stories relating to them, under certain guidelines. The case was brought by a Spanish lawyer who was unhappy that a search for his name would pull up links to a year-old administrative announcement in a local newspaper that related the story of a court-ordered auction of his property to pay off debts – a story that would obviously be bad for the lawyer’s business.

The right to be forgotten doesn’t call for such stories to be erased altogether – the newspapers or websites carrying them are not required to delete the stories, but Google and other search engines are supposed to make them more difficult to find. There are caveats however – certain stories deemed to be in the “public interest” will not be deleted, so people don’t have to spend weeks combing website archives to find out about the misdeeds of those in the public eye – politicians, for example.

Google unhappily complied with the ruling, setting up a process for European citizens to request that links to stories about them be taken down. However, Google only pulls the links from its European country-specific domains, such as Google.co.uk or Google.fr, which means smart searchers can simply go to Google.com or other non-European domains to find the deleted search results.

However, CNIL decided Google wasn’t playing fair, and said the right to be forgotten must be applied to all of its sites. Google appealed the ruling, saying CNIL didn’t have the authority to demand European laws be upheld in other countries.

Unfortunately for Google, CNIL today said it was rejecting Google’s appeal.

“If this right was limited to some extensions, it could be easily circumvented: in order to find the delisted result, it would be sufficient to search on another extension (e.g. searching in France using google.com), namely to use another form of access to the processing,” the agency said. “This would equate stripping away the efficiency of this right, and applying variable rights to individuals depending on the internet user who queries the search engine and not on the data subject.”

“As a matter of principle, we respectfully disagree with the idea that a single national Data Protection Authority should determine which webpages people in other countries can access via search engines,” a spokesman for Google told The New York Times.

CNIL says Google could face legal action and potentially be hit with heavy fines if it doesn’t comply with the ruling.

Photo Credit: will_i_be via Compfight cc