In a defeat for Google, a French court has ordered the search engine to pre-filter nine images of former Formula One chief Max Mosley, the company said today. Mosley was also awarded €1 in damages.
“In a troubling ruling, a French court held today that Google must build a filter to remove nine of Mr Mosley’s images from our search results. This decision should worry those who champion the cause of freedom of expression on the Internet. Our existing removal process represents an effective way of helping Mr. Mosley,” Daphne Keller, Associate General Counsel, said in a statement.
The company said in a blog post that the case was not just about Google.
Any start-up could face the same daunting and expensive obligation to build new censorship tools — despite the harm to users’ fundamental rights and the ineffectiveness of such measures.
