BC Court Orders Google To Remove Sites From Its Global Index
Here’s something that you should keep your eye on. Michael Geist who is an Ottawa based expert on Internet and E-commerce law has commented on a case where a BC court has apparently ordered Google to remove entries from not only Google.ca, but Google sites worldwide:
The case involves a company that claims that another company used its trade secrets to create a competing product along with “bait and switch” tactics to trick users into purchasing their product. The defendant company had been the target of several court orders demanding that it stop selling the copied product on their website. Google voluntarily removed search results for the site from Google.ca search results, but was unwilling to block the sites from its worldwide search results.
The case turned largely on jurisdictional questions: could a B.C. court assert jurisdiction over Google? Was a Canadian court the right court to hear the case when Google is based in California? Is it appropriate to issue an order requiring the complete removal of results for all users worldwide?
The court answered affirmatively to all questions.
Not only that, the court cited the “right to be forgotten” [Warning: PDF] case where Google was forced to remove entries from their search engine for any EU citizen who wanted to have entries related to them removed.
This will likely open up a legal can of worms. First, this decision extends outside of Canada. So one question that comes to mind is that can a court really have jurisdiction beyond its borders? While this court seems to think it does, I am not sure that an appeals court will see things the same way. Also, lets pretend that this is a judgement that survives any and all challenges to it. I think it will create a black market for disclosing information. Which means that not only has this court potentially increased the value of the information that gets blocked. But it also potentially had the effect of encouraging it to spread rather than restricting it. Finally, this decision only applies to Google. What about, Bing, DuckDuckGo and any other search engine? What happens to them?
What are your thoughts on this? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts on this case.
June 18, 2014 at 2:20 pm
This is an awful decision.
The “Right to be forgotten” principle doesn’t apply here. That’s a right to have information one directly controls removed from the web. Not another entity’s.
And does this pave the way to have, say, the government of China suing Google to suppress links to info about Tienanmen Square in all the countries it operates in, not just China? I don’t see the difference. And of course there are all those other search engines.
If the Burnaby company has been rightly wronged its best course of action is to sue the offenders out of existence, not manipulate what is a de facto public information utility.