Court Acknowledged the Right to be Forgotten in Argentina

Natalia Denegri initiated a court case seeking the removal of content, videos and news articles related to the Cóppola case, which had a significant impact in the media in the 90s. Access to said content was unrestricted as a result of the indexing of Google’s search engine.

The Civil Court of the City of Buenos Aires partially granted the plaintiff’s request. To decide on that basis, the judge balanced conflicting fundamental rights: the protection of the freedom of speech and information on one hand, and the right to honor and privacy of persons on the other. In this sense, the ruling recognized the right to be forgotten, acknowledged by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the renowned case “Costeja v Google”, as an alternative that may conceal those fundamental rights. As criteria to apply said right, the plaintiff must justify the reasonability of the request and prove that the affected rights prevail over the right of freedom of speech.

In this regard, the judge accepted the plaintiff’s request but rejected the petition of removing the whole content associated with the claimant on the grounds of considering that certain existing information refers to a fact that had an influence in a specific time and, therefore, constitutes part of the “collective memory”.

Since the ruling was issued by a First Instance Court, it may still be appealed by the parties.