Google has said that it is due to appear in a Madrid court tomorrow to challenge a demand that it remove links to newspaper articles and official gazettes.

According to the search company, it is to appeal orders by Spain’s Data Protection Agency (AEPD) that it removes links to articles which are the subject of complaints relating to privacy.

Google director of external relations for Europe, Peter Barron published the following statement today:

We are disappointed by the actions of the Spanish privacy regulator. Spanish and European law rightly hold the publisher of the material responsible for its content.

Requiring intermediaries like search engines to censor material published by others would have a profound, chilling effect on free expression without protecting people’s privacy.

The Spanish DPA has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Update:

The Spanish DPA has now responded to our request for comment. It says in cases where a complaint it made and the page hosting the information cannot erase the data because there is a law that protects the publication or a conflict with another fundamental right (freedom of expression), the majority of the AEPD resolutions order search engines to avoid indexing the information of those users as recognition of “the right of the applicants to be forgotten”.