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New York (CNN Business) - The main European court has ruled that Facebook and other Internet companies may be forced to remove certain content worldwide.
If a European court orders a company to delete content, such as a publication, that company must delete it in all the places where it appears.
The decision poses huge potential problems for internet companies. It cannot be appealed.
The case revolves around an Austrian political authority, Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, who was looking for Facebook to remove derogatory comments about her that had been published on the page of an Irish person. An Austrian court had found that the comments were detrimental to its reputation by insulting and defame it.
The Court of Justice of the European Communities ruled that Facebook should delete the information and block access to that information worldwide.
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"This ruling raises critical questions about freedom of expression and the role that internet companies should play in monitoring, interpreting and eliminating speeches that could be illegal in a particular country," Facebook said in a statement.
The social network said the decision could force internet companies to proactively monitor all content and then interpret whether it is "equivalent" to content that has been declared illegal by a nation's court.
"It undermines the long-standing principle that a country has no right to impose its laws on speech in another country," Facebook said in its statement.
This is not purely a European problem for internet companies such as Facebook and Google. Increasingly they receive more attention and criticism for their role in spreading false information, especially with regard to elections and political discourse. There have been hearings in Washington and even calls for the dissolution of major technology companies.
But Europe has less guarantees of freedom of expression and much more restrictive laws related to privacy and the so-called “right to be forgotten”, established by the same European court in 2014, which allows citizens of the European Union to request that the links that contain personal information about them being removed from the search results.
But last week that court ruled in favor of Google that in most cases that right should apply only within the European Union.
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In that case, the French privacy regulator had tried to extend the law beyond the borders of the European Union, a position opposed by the media, defenders of freedom of expression and technology companies.
The court recognized that other countries do not recognize the right to be forgotten, and added that the protection of personal data is not an absolute right and must be balanced with other freedoms.
