Russia took a major step toward introducing its own “right to be forgotten” today, as the parliament's lower house passed the final draft [1] of legislation that would make it possible for individuals to force Internet search engines to delete links to certain kinds of information about them. Once the Federation Council passes this bill, it goes to President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to sign it.
In May 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union found [2] that individuals have the right to ask search engines like Google to remove certain results about them. Since that decision, Google alone has evaluated more than 1 million URLs for removal (identified in more than 279,000 requests [3]), removing 41.3 percent of those links.
If Russia adopts its own “right to be forgotten,” Google and Yandex will be the two most affected websites. To understand what this could mean in practice, RuNet Echo presents a comparison of the new Russian legislation and the landmark European Court decision last year.
Image created by Kevin Rothrock.