Strictly speaking, the EU's Court of Justice was just applying the EU Data Protection Directive's rule that organizations mustn't process more personal data tha

Strictly speaking, the EU's Court of Justice was just applying the EU Data Protection Directive's rule that organizations mustn't process more personal data than necessary, for longer than is necessary. That's a freestanding obligation that exists regardless of whether someone makes a request or not. It just so happens that in practice courts/regulators tend to view act/enforce it when someone has had to remind a company that they're failing to comply with that obligation, and the company hasn't complied. Hence it looks like something that companies only need to act on if they receive a request. Practically, if you're a search engine, that's the only pragmatic outcome anyway - how are you supposed to know, for each and every entry in your database, whether or not they satisfy the criteria for them to be "forgotten"? Better to have people flag potentially problematic ones, for you to then evaluate.