The May 2014 EU court’s opinion refers to a 1890 Harvard Law Review article entitled “The Right to Privacy,” co-authored by Louis D. Brandeis (later Justice on the US Supreme Court), which contended that individuals have the right to be protected: “Recent inventions and business methods such as instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life.”
124 years after the Brandeis article photographs and newspaper have been replaced by the Internet and the European Court of Justice included this statement in their ruling:
… the role of internet search engine service providers should be interpreted in the light of the existing EU legal instruments relating to data protection,…
For more details about the EU ruling on the ‘right to be forgotten’ and Google’s responses you are welcome to read my June 2014 eCommerce Times column entitled “Free Speech vs. Internet Privacy and the ‘Right to Be Forgotten’.”