Europe’s Latest Export: Internet Censorship

[Commentary] American Web surfers may soon find their search-engine results censored, thanks to a recent decision by French regulators.

The rules give European Union residents the right to request that Internet search engines remove links that appear in searches for their own names. If Google is forced to comply with the EU rules globally, the result would be unprecedented censorship of Internet content world-wide, as well as a dangerous expansion of foreign regulators’ control over what Americans can see on the Web.

[Gattuso is a senior research fellow in regulatory policy at the Heritage Foundation]