Different civil society organizations, dedicated to the study of Internet public policies and defense of fundamental rights, issued a statement in which they highlight “the decisive role played by Internet search engines in the global dissemination of journalistic information.”
In this context, they express their concern about “the withdrawal of the Google search results of two investigations published by the Uruguayan digital medium Sudestada, without guarantees of a prior defense, appeal and due process.”
The first notification is from October 12 and “the United States DMCA Law was applied for an alleged violation of copyright, but the content of the note that would be committing it is not reported.” The journalistic note is from 2017 and reveals that the Brazilian Prosecutor’s Office had verified that the legal study of former Uruguayan Minister of Economy Ignacio de Posadas had received more than 260,000 dollars from former Brazilian deputy Eduardo Cunha, imprisoned for millionaire bribes in an oil business.
The second decision was on October 25 and “is the product of a complaint by the European Personal Data Protection Act (GPDR), commonly used to apply the so-called ‘right to be forgotten'”. In this case, it is a note published in 2017, within the framework of the “Panama Papers” that provides details about the role of the Uruguayan study of lawyer Oscar Algorta in the Spanish corruption plot linked to the Canal de Isabel II company.
Inadmissible
The signatory organizations support Sudestada’s claim, understanding that, although the right to freedom of expression is not absolute, the abusive use of complaint mechanisms, framed either in alleged violations of copyright or in the so-called right to freedom, is inadmissible. oblivion as a strategy to silence expressions of public interest.
The petition is signed by 25 Latin American organizations.
For its part, the news search engine decided to restore one of the Sudestada notes that it had restricted at the time.
