Mosley wants right to be forgotten

Ex-Formula One chief Max Mosley is suing Google over images of him involved in an alleged Nazi sex party in one of the most high profile cases to invoke a “right to be forgotten”.
The case, being heard by a French court, follows Moseley successful suing the News of the World – and winning £60,000 – after it published the images of him taking part in the sex party in 2008.
Mosley denied a Nazi theme but admitted to have been involved in role-playing.
He is now targeting Google to force the search engine to remove any pages containing the grainy images published in the paper from the web, in addition to removing any thumbnails or videos of the activity.
He claims that the fact the images are available online for people to search for and view represents an invasion of his privacy.
“Google is perpetuating not only the spread of these illegal images but it is perpetuating the curiosity of internet users,” Clara Zerbib, a lawyer representing Mosley told the court.
But Google has fought back, arguing that filtering the images would represent a new form of web censorship, which if enabled, could eventually lead to news websites and satirist websites being blocked.
“We hope that the courts of France and Germany, where Mr Mosley has also filed suit, will reject his request for a censorship machine,” Keller concluded.
The court is set to come to a decision about the case, subject to appeal, on October 21.
Under the proposed shake-up of European data laws, all individuals could be given the “right to be forgotten”, forcing online companies to remove all their details. However, it has been argued that the measure – yet to be approved – is unworkable. And a recent ruling by the European Court has raised serious doubts about whether it will be implemented.