Canada’s Supreme Court has ordered Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) subsidiary Google to completely block various search results globally, setting a dangerous precedent that the government of one country can block information from people in other countries.
The Canadian Supreme Court made the ruling requiring Google to stop indexing an e-commerce website in a case filed against the online giant by a small tech firm called Equustek Solutions. The Supreme Court ruling enforces a previous judgement passed by a court in British Columbia. Equustek Solutions initially filed a lawsuit against its former distributor Datalink for allegedly selling generic products whose concept was stolen from Equustek Solutions.
Datalink fled from Canadian jurisdiction, continued operations outside and never showed up to court. This led to the initial ruling by the judge after which Google got involved and sought an appeal but the recent Supreme Court ruling was in favor of Equustek. The court ordered Google to pull down all the Datalink search results globally.
“This is welcome news for creators of all stripes who rely on the internet as their primary market and for whom illegal online activity can instantly wipe out careers and destroy investment in new releases,” stated Graham Henderson, the president of Music Canada.
Unfortunately, the ruling presents a huge problem for Google, regarding how governments might start handling and justifying internet censorship. A spokesperson for OpenMedia, an open communications advocate in Canada argued that the ruling on the Equustek case will provide leeway for governments to justify censorship requests. The spokesperson also stated that it could even lead to the removal of legal and non-infringing content, thus violating the hard work and potential earnings of content creators.
This explains why Google was quick to pursue the appeal even though it ended up not being successful. The ruling on the case was considered fair based on the fact that Datalink tried to break the law by stealing a business idea from another firm. As for internet regulations, the new ruling will hopefully not pave way for unfair regulations by governments.
Alphabet stock closed the latest trading session on Wednesday at $961.01 after a 1.36 percent gain compared to the value of the stock during the previous close.
