Imagine having been involved years ago in a legal matter that concluded with an acquittal. Your life has moved on, but typing your name into Google still brings up that outdated article, visible to anyone: employers, clients, family members. This is a more common situation than one might think, and Italian law today offers concrete tools to address it — including the award of damages.
What Is the Right to Be Forgotten?
The right to be forgotten is the right of every individual not to have information concerning them kept in circulation indefinitely, once that information has lost its public relevance or currency. This is not about erasing history, but about preventing events that have long since passed from continuing to affect a person's life through their persistent appearance in online search results.
In the digital context, this right is primarily expressed through what is known as deindexing: the removal of specific content from the index of search engines such as Google, so that it is no longer easily retrievable by third parties, even though it may remain published at the original source.
The Regulatory Framework: From the Cartabia Reform to the Present Day
With the entry into force of the Reform of Criminal Justice (Legislative Decree No. 150/2022), commonly known as the Cartabia Reform, the Italian legislature took a significant step in this direction. The new Article 64-ter of the Code of Criminal Procedure expressly recognises the right of persons who have been acquitted — or in respect of whom an order to discontinue proceedings, a judgment of no grounds to proceed, or a similar measure has been issued — to obtain that news items concerning them are no longer indexed by search engines.
This provision is of considerable practical importance: for the first time, the Code of Criminal Procedure explicitly addresses the relationship between the outcome of criminal proceedings and the management of online information, acknowledging that an acquittal must produce effects not only within the courtroom, but also within the digital environment in which we live.
When Delayed Deindexing Becomes Actionable Damage
The most delicate — and most relevant — aspect for those who find themselves in this situation concerns the legal consequences of an omissive or dilatory course of conduct on the part of the search engine operator. The position emerging from the most recent legal analysis is clear:
- The delayed deindexing of a news item that is no longer of public interest constitutes an unlawful act.
- Such conduct is in itself capable of infringing the honour and reputation of the person concerned.
- The damage may be proved even through simple presumptions (presunzioni semplici), without the need to demonstrate in detail each and every negative consequence suffered.
- The company responsible for the search engine may therefore be held liable for compensatory damages arising from its failure to act promptly upon a legitimate deindexing request.
