Canada's top court backs order for Google to remove firm's website from searches
A hypothetical: Company A is in country X and company B is in country Y. Country X declares on behalf of company A that company B be blocked from searches worldwide (including country Y). Country Y declares on behalf of company B that company B cannot be blocked from searches (at least in country Y). Who wins in the global context? Whichever can/will fine the most? Does this give benefits to the overly-regulating country/region and is that what we want?
Another hypothetical question: Can Canada require some retailer in the US to remove another non-Canadian company's products in the US just because the retailer and a competing company both have presence in Canada?
This wouldn't be the first time a government is requiring Google to modify their search results. This case parallels the "right to be forgotten" cases brought against them by the EU several years ago. There is a reason that civil liberties and human rights organizations like the ACLU are concerned about this precedent.
In the US, with the murders of unarmed civilians by law enforcement and subsequent acquittals occurring at an alarming rate with increasing public outrage, it might be only a matter of time before a court somewhere rules in the favor of a person found innocent who is suing to keep as many details of a particular murder off the Internet on the grounds that his or her constitutional rights being violated (i.e inability to find employment, friendship, etc), and companies such as Google being forced to comply with the court's rulings.
Canadian law professor Michael Geist has a pretty good summary/analysis of this case:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2017/06/global-internet-takedown-...
The EFF is apparently on the side of ElGoog:
https://www.eff.org/cases/google-v-equustek
"Such a broad injunction sets a dangerous precedent, especially given that it is likely to conflict with the laws of other nations."
> "Today's decision confirms that online service providers...have an affirmative duty to take steps to prevent the internet from becoming a black market."
Well that's terrifying.
> Google voluntarily removed hundreds of webpages from its Canadian search results on Google.ca. But the material continued to show up on Google's global search results.
> So Equustek obtained a further injunction from the court ordering Google to remove the websites from its global search results.
> Google appealed and argued it was not a real party to the dispute, and that a global injunction would violate freedom of expression.
Google didn't object in principle to removing the listings from google.ca but did object to removing them from the the main site results. What does that mean, there's actually no objection in principle but there's enough technical challenge or cost to modifying the global results that they're willing to fight it in court?
I've never expected to use a Russian search engine to evade censorship but there we go:
>"We have not, to date, accepted that freedom of expression requires the facilitation of the unlawful sale of goods."
That precise argument may be well-intentioned, but it threatens free speech because it sets a precedent placing a burden of acceptable effects and results of free speech.
In other words, should Tiamen Square be de-indexed globally because free speech in China does not require it. Should torrent trackers be de-indexed--free speech does not require illegal file sharing, after all? What about bit torrent clients? Tor browser?
This site may or may not be rightfully de-indexed, but it is not because of some limitations of free speech.
I was expecting the ruling to involve some really bad behavior such as selling misslabeled drugs or invading the privacy of private individuals. Instead it is a benign product relabling suit. IMO, product relabeling doesn't even harm the company who's products are relabeled.
Why don't they just use robots.txt to keep themselves out of Google's index? User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: / Has Google stopped using that directive?
I wonder if the website in question is listed on other search engines (I can't see why not).
Assuming this is the case, is it fair to force one company to expend the effort altering their search results when others don't have to? Did Google do anything wrong that Microsoft (Bing) or Yahoo didn't?
Ironically, now that G has been ordered by a court to take the content down, keeping it up is a form of protest, i.e. a comment on the law, i.e. political speech.
This kind of stuff should be arbitrated in an international court. Giving an authority in a single country the say on what can and can not be seen on the internet world wide is a terrible idea.
Every time something like this happens I wish YaCy (http://yacy.net/en/index.html) was in better shape.
Not honoring http://www.robotstxt.org/faq/prevent.html can be a felony;
If a product or service is a proven scam, it is highly likely to be a scam in all jurisdictions. Googles own takedown procedure should have fixed this before it got to the courts.
Completely read that wrong. Thought it order google to remove it's own website addresses from search results. that would have been interesting.
Removing results from google makes so little sense.
Can I buy google ads pointing to those blocked websites?
I wonder if this decision can be used as a framework to kill extortion-based sites such as RipoffReport.com that Google has aided and abetted for more than a decade. That would be wonderful.
Google should have country specific feeds (canada.google.com) instead of domains. Then location based filtering is forced on the browser where it should be.
This is total bullshit. Relatively benign ruling but sets a dangerous precedent.
I am confused as to how a Canadian court could have any sway on search results in other countries? Is there even any legal precedent on the matter?
If you kill freedom, freedom wins.
I'm much more worried about these governments and their censorship than I am Google's near monopoly on search.
Tremendously impactful decision, regardless of which side of the case you support.
Interestingly, the majority addressed a Google argument centered upon concerns regarding the possibility of international censorship:
"Google’s argument that a global injunction violates international comity because it is possible that the order could not have been obtained in a foreign jurisdiction, or that to comply with it would result in Google violating the laws of that jurisdiction, is theoretical. If Google has evidence that complying with such an injunction would require it to violate the laws of another jurisdiction, including interfering with freedom of expression, it is always free to apply to the British Columbia courts to vary the interlocutory order accordingly. To date, Google has made no such application. In the absence of an evidentiary foundation, and given Google’s right to seek a rectifying order, it is not equitable to deny E the extraterritorial scope it needs to make the remedy effective, or even to put the onus on it to demonstrate, country by country, where such an order is legally permissible."
In other words, if an interlocutory order with international scope would violate foreign freedom of expression legislation (or other legislation in general), it would be possible to seek to vary the interlocutory order by raising those issues specifically.
This framework should be familiar to jurists in Canada, as it resembles the Paramountcy doctrine.
Whether or not this case will be widely used is unclear. This case is nearly 100% fact-perfect for the Respondent - it honestly looks like a civil-rights test case. It is very possible that imperfect everyday facts provide sufficient fuel for judges to distinguish this case from the case in front of them.
The dissent is interesting because it lists a number of pieces of evidence the dissenters would have needed to see before moving forward, including the impact of the first order on sales figures. These dissents often provide counsel with information regarding how to structure future cases in order to avoid outstanding concerns.
These are my first pass thoughts. I'll probably read it through another two times before the day is done.