On 31 January, the Japanese Supreme Court, for the first time in its history, handed down a decision regarding a so-called “right to be forgotten” case. The right to be forgotten—whose development the EU helped shape—entails an individual having the right to ask that a search engine remove search results linking to a specific result about him- or herself. The Japanese Supreme Court decided in favor of the search engine giant, Google, without referring to this emerging yet still contested right to be separated from one’s past online. Noteworthy, nonetheless, is that the Japanese Supreme Court laid down certain criteria with which to mandate the removal of search results. (The decision in Japanese is available here.) Continue reading →