Google fights plan to extend 'right to be forgotten'

European rules that allow individuals the "right to be forgotten" online could be extended worldwide.

The European Court of Justice is hearing evidence on the matter and will rule in 2019.

Google argues that extending the law could turn it into a tool for censorship, in "less democratic" regimes.

France's regulator said that Google is currently not respecting the rights of citizens to have information erased.

A panel of 15 judges will hear evidence from 70 or more stakeholders in Luxembourg on Tuesday.

The right to be forgotten became law in 2014, following the case of Spaniard Mario Costeja who successfully argued that out-of-date details about his financial circumstances should be removed from Google.

At the time, the ECJ ruled that information deemed "inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive" should be delisted.

While the content remains online, it cannot be found via online searches of an individual's name.

Google, which was not happy with the judgement, complied but only by delisting requests on local country domains, something which angered regulators.

Since 2014, the search engine has received more than 700,000 requests to delist information amounting to 2.7 million web addresses.

It has complied with less than half (44%).

France's Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes wants the court to clarify whether the delisting should extend beyond the French version of Google's search engine to all versions across the world.

As well as affecting other search engines, such as Bing and Yahoo, the judgement could also affect social networks.