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The law doesn’t apply globally: it allows a French citizen to ask Google to have their info removed. Period. It doesn’t allow US people to do the same. That this info is hidden in all countries Google operates in is a side-effect. As I wrote in another comment when Gawker is sued for publishing some private info about an American you’re not expecting Gawker to censor itself in the US only.

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Gawker could chose to relocate it's business outside the US, but as long as they are a US corporation, they are bound by US laws and rulings handed down by US courts. Furthermore, defamation laws for publishing content are very different than the right to be forgotten laws which apply to indexing content. No one is arguing that the content is defamation, since it is true and reasonable, the argument is that the content is no longer relevant to a person's character (eg shoplifting arrest as a teenager that made local news).

Fair point; the Gawker analogy doesn’t work here.

> The law doesn’t apply globally: it allows a French citizen to ask Google to have their info removed. Period. It doesn’t allow US people to do the same. That this info is hidden in all countries Google operates in is a side-effect.

Currently the info is only hidden if Google thinks that you are searching from within Europe.

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