The Argentine Supreme Court holds a hearing for an actress's claim to oblivion on Google

Buenos Aires, 17 Mar The Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina began a public hearing on Thursday to decide on a case by Natalia Denegri against Google, in which the actress claims that the “right to be forgotten” should be applied to content referring to a judicial case from the 1990s, but which will have impact on the ability to limit access to information on the Internet. Denegri — who is now a multi-award-winning businesswoman, host and television producer in the US — filed a lawsuit against Google to stop offering video or image content that starred her in the search engine among the search engine results that link her to the so-called “Coppola case”, which occurred in 1996. Denegri obtained two favorable judgments in the Justice, Google appealed and the case reached the Supreme Court, which is holding a public hearing on Thursday where “friends of the court” provided their opinion on the case, which will be completed on Friday, with the presentation of the Attorney General of the Nation, the lawyers of the parties and also the claimant. At the public hearing, it was recalled that the case discusses the conflict between the right to honour and the protection of personal and family privacy and the right to the protection of freedom of expression and information. And it was warned that the Supreme Court's decision will set a standard on future cases of people who may ask search engines to stop indexing past content that they consider harmful. THE CASE Denegri's request concerns the criminal case against Guillermo Cóppola, the former representative of footballer Diego Maradona, in which he states that he was the victim of a procedure in which drugs were “planted” when he was a minor. The “Coppola case” had a high media significance and Denegri gained public notoriety by participating with other young women in television programs, where they starred in scenes of fights and discussions. “I am not the one in those videos, I am the character that the corruption of the 90s wanted to play of me,” he told Radio Nacional Denegri on Thursday, which will be presenting tomorrow at the public hearing. Denegri, who is married with two children, is worried about bullying, which is “serious” in the US: “For years my family and I have been suffering in silence and there is no right for my children to go through the same thing.” For Google, this is a “ruling that limits the right to information and freedom of expression,” according to a statement it released to the media, where it warned that “millions of users may be limited in their ability to search for and obtain lawful information through the Internet.” THE AUDIENCE Among the arguments in favor of Denegri, there were repeated requests to the Court to incorporate the “gender perspective” when passing judgment, as well as the current standards of digital forgetfulness of children and adolescents. It also pointed to the “responsibility” of large technological platforms and to “avoid digital authoritarianism”, the need to solve “the problems of algorithms” and to “know” the criteria they use. Against Denegri, the arguments in favor of freedom of expression were repeated, which it is “risky” for an administrative authority to say what content can be published on the internet and it was called for the development of a “limited list of circumstances” in which de-indexing should be allowed. It was argued that the “Coppola case” is a judicial case of “public interest” and therefore videos on the subject, that freedom of expression respects news “which also scandalize” and it was recalled that the actress is a “public personality”. It was added that the “right to be forgotten is not to design a custom digital past, but for exceptional situations.”