Japan’s Supreme Court has rejected a man’s demand that news search results of his arrest on sex charges be deleted from Google, ruling that to do so would violate freedom of expression. Japanese media said it was the first decision by the nation’s top court involving the “right to be forgotten” relating to internet searches. “The deletion [of references to the charge] can be allowed only when the value of privacy protection clearly outweighs that of information disclosure,” the court said in a statement posted on its website. Tuesday’s decision came after the Saitama District Court, north of Tokyo, in December 2015 upheld a temporary injunction against Google ordering it to delete search results about a man convicted on charges related to child prostitution and pornography.
