In 2014, German Princess Theodora Sayn-Wittgenstein, 27 at the time, attended Oktoberfest, a charity at st Andrews University, got drunk, assaulted police officers and lifeguards, and said, “I’m fixing my nails this morning and wonder how much I can kill Muslims.” Her family, with the help of Google and the European Law on the Right to Advance, tried to make her disappear last night.
Twice a year, Google stores knowledge about how governments and businesses send requests to the company in its transparency report. A segment of the report summarizes general requests for content deletion to “report discussions on online content regulation”.
While the data in this segment is not specific, corporate generation contradictoryly gives main points about content removed from the list. These “potential public interest requests” necessarily immortalize a variety of content that has been removed through Google over the past decade.
For Germany, an access leaps, identifying “the request for the dismissal of a lawyer from a member of a German noble family,” who “chased after a drunken night in Scotland.”
The result of the complaint was the removal of 197 Google search links in Germany following a “preliminary court order against a third party stating that the identification content is illegitimate”.
Local media also reported that Sayn-Wittgenstein had taken off his clothes, made homophobic comments to the workers’ security corps, and called Scottish paedophile officers to the police station.
The right to be forgotten was intended to allow others to data that is not public and own about them to remain online. It provides express exceptions to public interest data, however, it has been used through elites with the means to bring instances to court to prevent the public from knowing their misdeeds further. Last year, a study paper written through Google staff noted that between 2014 and 2019, “non-governmental public figures such as celebrities requested the removal of 74,602 URLs and additional 65,933 URLs and government officials.”
Sayn-Wittgenstein first denied the incident, before admitting it to court. She pleaded with the blame on four counts, adding attack and a break of peace. One of the fees was reprimanded and she was fined 1000 euros for the other three.
The princess’s lawyer said she “is ashamed of herself and her family,” adding that “her behavior is completely misplaced.”
A German law firm, Schertz Bergmann, has requested the removal of 249 newspaper articles from Google, which raises an initial injunction requested against a third party. In its transparency report, Google showed the deletion of 197 links after a German court ‘illegitimate’ report.
Google declined to give additional percentage points on the request or the explanation of the reason for the resolution to remove the items. We weren’t going to get a copy of the court order.
Following the exclusion from the list, the open-air search for “Theodora Sayn-Wittgenstein” in Germany shows the effects on the princess’s marriage in 2018 and items similar to the drunken outburst. In the country, the same studies refer almost exclusively to effects on their marriage. Google refers to the removal at the back of the page.
Click “Learn more about the request” to redirect to an 84-URL file of news sites, blogs, and discussion forums that refer to the incident. Providing an email allows the user to request full access to all links. Articles from major UK media outlets are not indexed on Google’s homepage outside Germany, but only on the fourth and fifth pages of the country.
When asked if the elimination amounted to the elimination of press freedom, a Google spokesman said: “Since 2014, we have been working hard to put into force the right to be forgotten in Europe and to find a moderate balance between people’s rights to information. The comment echoes an earlier quote given to the BBC after the EU’s highest court ruled that Google did not have to apply the right to be forgotten in the world.
At the end of last month, the German court also ruled, in two separate cases, that the right to data prevailed over the right to be forgotten. Failures mean that Google is not required to remove correct factual press articles, even if they are not flattering.
Although Germany is now a federal country, the abolition and legal privileges of the Aristocracy in 1919 led to the emergence of a new elegance of wealthy commoners. The values remained, as did the monetary assets that the rest of us did not have.
The removal of the Sayn-Wittgenstein effects has set a precedent suggesting that hard and hard effects have more right to be forgotten than the average user, or at least the ability to see it applied.
What is the way other people can be legally forgotten? While the right to erase exists in European knowledge legislation since 1995, there has been a constant legal struggle between the right to privacy and freedom of the press.
The right to be forgotten existed in a draft regulation as early as 2012 and has since been incorporated into Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU. In this regulation, it is explained as an “obligation to delete data”.
In practice, however, forgetfulness applies on a case-by-case basis.
“The precise contours replace the court ruling and vary according to the express jurisdictional contexts,” said Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, professor of Internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Under the GDPR, “the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and information” is protected. Therefore, the public interest trumps privacy.
“In the jurisdictions I know, it was transparent that the media would be exempt,” Mayer-Schonberger said.
In his book Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, Mayer-Schonberger describes the risks of data that remains online forever. While he believes some data deserves not to stay online, he says that doesn’t mean it deserves not to be archived.
“Forgetfulness is never absolute, relative,” he said, “The Guardian, for example, never erases its files; However, when you access old numbers over the Internet, they infrequently hide names. When you go to the Guardian files and check the database, of course, not everything is redacted.
Theodora Sayn-Wittgenstein was contacted through her estate but did not respond.