Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, shortly before midnight on August 7, 1966; however, his birth certificate lists his date of birth as the 8th. His father, Jimmy, worked as a grocery store manager, while his mother, Doris Ann (nee Dudley), and his grandmother, Erma, ran the House of Learning, a small private school in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse, where Wales and his three siblings received their early education. As a child, Wales was a keen reader with an acute intellectual curiosity. When he was three, his mother bought a World Book Encyclopedia from a door-to-door salesman.

On May 14, 2014, Wales strongly reacted to the European Court of Justice (ECJ)'s ruling on the right of individuals to request the removal of information from Google's search results. He stated to the BBC that the ruling was "one of the most wide-sweeping internet censorship rulings that I've ever seen". In early June 2014, the TechCrunch media outlet interviewed Wales on the subject, as he had been invited by Google to join an advisory committee that the corporation had formed as an addition to the formal process that the ECJ requested from Google to manage such requests. The May 2014 ECJ ruling required swift action from Google to implement a process that allowed people to directly contact the corporation about the removal of information that they believe is outdated or irrelevant. Google's Larry Page revealed that 30 percent of requests received by Google since the ruling was made were categorized as "other". Wales explained in email responses that he was contacted by Google on May 28, 2014, and "The remit of the committee is to hold public hearings and issue recommendations--not just to Google but to legislators and the public." When asked about his view on the ECJ's "right to be forgotten" ruling, Wales replied: I think the decision will have no impact on people's right to privacy, because I don't regard truthful information in court records published by court order in a newspaper to be private information. If anything, the decision is likely to simply muddle the interesting philosophical questions and make it more difficult to make real progress on privacy issues. In the case of truthful, non-defamatory information obtained legally, I think there is no possibility of any defensible "right" to censor what other people are saying. It is important to avoid language like "data" because we aren't talking about "data"--we are talking about the suppression of knowledge. Wales then provided further explanation, drawing a comparison with Wikipedia: "You do not have a right to use the law to prevent Wikipedia editors from writing truthful information, nor do you have a right to use the law to prevent Google from publishing truthful information." Wales concluded with an indication of his ideal outcome: "A part of the outcome should be the very strong implementation of a right to free speech in Europe--essentially the language of the First Amendment in the U.S."

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