Another good idea gone awry

Europe’s highest court recently decided that Google, Bing and others must allow people in Europe to ask that links to information about themselves be removed from search results.  The idea was a good one — to enable individuals to protect their reputations — but Google has begun informing legitimate, prestigious news organizations that it will no longer provide search links to articles that people don’t want discovered.  The news agencies will, of course, still have the articles in their archives, but you and I won’t be able to find them with Google.  The rich and famous are already using this law to make it harder for researchers to find incriminating information.  More than 50,000 requests have already been submitted to Google, and the debate over what should — and should not — be removed is likely to be contentious.