Is an insider trading conviction from January 2003 "irrelevant?" In the U.K., the answer appears to be that it is--at least for purposes of the EU's new "Right to be Forgotten" directive.

In 2003, a U.K. man named Tim Blackstone (identified by The Telegraph as "a former porn star and brother of Baroness Blackstone") was found guilty in the Blackfriars Crown Court of two counts of insider trading. Blackstone was convicted on charges that he purchased 150,000 shares in Murray Financial Corporation shortly after being appointed as its public relations adviser in August 1999. Blackstone allegedly purchased the shares while in possession of nonpublic information that Murray Financial was planning a £30m bid for Leek Building Society. He then sold the shares 24 hours later, after the price of the shares jumped over 25%.

 

Fast-forward 11 years to May 2014, when the EU highest court, the European Court of Justice, ruled that a "right to be forgotten" exists that requires search engine Google to remove links to content that it finds, following a complaint, to be "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" information. The Telegraph reported this week that Google has now received over 250,000 removal requests from complainants--apparently including one from Blackstone.

 

The Telegraph is maintaining a page that contains all of its articles to which Google has agreed to remove links. These articles now include this 2003 article about Blackstone's conviction, which Google has presumably deemed to be "irrelevant or no longer relevant" in 2014.