14 DAY TRIAL // Perhaps unsurprisingly given France's history of censoring the web, particularly when Google is involved, a French court has decided that, if you're rich enough, you can have Google remove the things you don't like from the web at your disposal.
Technically, it decided that the search engine had to block images of former FIA boss Max Mosley enjoying a presumably usual treat for a man his age, a Nazi-themed dominatrix party. Mosley has argued that the theme was simply that of a generic German prison, not a Nazi one.
The images have been plastered all over the web for the past few years since they surfaced, and Mosley has been spending huge amounts of money trying to take them down.
He realized early on, like anyone else trying to remove something from the web, that this wasn't a winnable fight and instead decided that it would be much easier for Google to do the job of his lawyers.
The French court agreed that Google was, indeed, responsible for ridding the web of the images, which are in no way doctored or false. What's more, the ruling applies to the global search engine, not just the local site. Obviously, the search giant doesn't agree and will appeal the decision, thankfully.
"This decision should worry those who champion the cause of freedom of expression on the Internet," Daphne Keller, Google's associate general counsel, said in a statement after the decision.
Google has been adamant from the get-go that, while it feels for Mosley, it doesn't believe it should be responsible for what other sites post, especially since it would be impossible to tell whether the action of those sites is illegal in any way.
"We sympathize with Mr. Mosley, and with anyone who believes their rights have been violated. We offer well-established tools to help people to remove specific pages from our search results when those pages have clearly been determined to violate the law," Google said last month.
"In fact, we have removed hundreds of pages for Mr. Mosley, and stand ready to remove others he identifies. But the law does not support Mr. Mosley’s demand for the construction of an unprecedented new Internet censorship tool," it added.