Advertisers: US ‘right to be forgotten’ would be legally ‘baseless’

US Regulators would be violating the First Amendment if they were to force Google and other search engines to delist certain irrelevant search results at a user’s request, a major advertising trade group said on July 31. The Association of National Advertisers sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission urging it to “forcefully reject” a complaint from Consumer Watchdog, which requested that Google be required to allow Americans to have the “right to be forgotten.”

Due to a court ruling in 2014, Europeans are allowed to petition search engines to remove certain results for their name that are either inadequate, irrelevant or excessive. Consumer Watchdog urged the FTC to force Google to offer the same right to Americans. But the advertising trade group said that would be unprecedented. “There is no precedent for compelling companies to import expansive privacy policies that are not already part of their terms of service,” the letter states. “The fact that a company generally has privacy protections does not provide carte blanche to impose regulations on CW’s wish list.” The Association of National Advertisers added: “Put simply, certain regulations acceptable under European law would be plainly unconstitutional if applied in the United States. The so-called ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ is one such policy.”