SPECIAL COLLECTION OF THE CASE LAW ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION ted of all charges, he argued that seven years had passed and that information on his criminal process had lost public interest. He also claimed that his “right to be forgotten”, as well as his rights to privacy and honor, must prevail over freedom of expression. While acknowledging that the “right to be forgotten” is not established in the Chilean legal system, the Court ruled that the right to access information must prevail, since the facts of the case at hand were of public interest. However, the Court held that, even if they were not bound to delete the news, some of the respondents had arbitrarily conveyed the information partially, so they had a duty to complete and update such information, and to publish Mr. Maureria’s acquittal. Similarly, the Supreme Court of Spain recognized the right to be forgotten of a public official whose name appeared in Google’s search results related to partially inaccurate facts published by the newspaper El País. In 2007, El País published an article claiming that the official participated in an illegal wild boar hunt for which he was fined. The official successfully appealed the fine, and subsequently sought to de-index El País’ article from Google’s search results. Google refused citing freedom of information. The Supreme Court ruled for the official in Google LLC v. Audiencia Nacional, arguing that in this case, the right to the protection of personal data superseded the right to information because the content of the search result was inaccurate. In DPN v. Google Brasil Internet Ltda (2018), the Superior Court of Justice (“STJ”) of Brazil ordered various search engines to remove links associating a public prosecutor with fraud allegations based in part on her “right to be forgotten”. DPN had filed a lawsuit against Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft to remove search results relating to her part in the 2006-2007 public tender for judgeships in the State of Rio de Janeiro. The Court reasoned that the private interest of the individual outweighed the public interest of access to information in view of the length of time, over 10 years, that had elapsed since the incidents in question. “It is not a question of effectively erasing the past, but of allowing the person involved to follow his or her life with reasonable anonymity,” the Court said. An interesting case by the ECtHR (Third Section) discussed the status of people who unwillingly enter public debate by chance. In Hurbain v. Belgium, the Court considered that an order to anonymise an article in a newspaper’s electronic archive (which referred to a person’s involvement in a fatal road traffic accident for which they were subsequently convicted) did not breach the applicant publisher’s right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the ECHR. The applicant, Patrick Hurbain’s newspaper Le Soir published an article reporting on a series of fatal car accidents which had occurred in a short period of time. It mentioned the full name of one of the drivers involved, “G” who successfully sued the applicant and received an order in their favor. The ECtHR upheld the decision of the domestic courts and emphasized that a person who is not a public figure may acquire notoriety in the context of a criminal process/trial but that may decline with the passage of time, with the effect that they may be able to rely on the “right to be forgotten” in order to go back to being someone who is unknown to the public. This case has been referred to the Grand Chamber. More info here. Related to P.H. v. O.G. (2016), Supreme Court, Belgium. 21