Court Date Set for Google Lawsuit

Jason Jardine wrote to mention a C|Net story giving the date and location for Google's court case with the government. From the article: "Google's attempt to fend off the government's request for millions of search terms will move to a federal court in San Jose, Calif., on Feb. 27. U.S. District Judge James Ware on Thursday set the date for the highly anticipated hearing, which is expected to determine whether the U.S. Justice Department will prevail in its fight to force Google to help it defend an anti-pornography law this fall."

Re:You kidding me?

[WebHostingGuy]

I could tell you but then I would have to kill you.

Seriously, the gist is that the government wants the search records so they can promote/support their war on porn. The law is that the government issued a subpoena, which is a court order, i.e., legal requirement to do something. Google said no because the subpoena essentially is not valid. This is the long story very abbreviated.

Re:You kidding me?

[ranton]

The law is that the government issued a subpoena, which is a court order, i.e., legal requirement to do something. Google said no because the subpoena essentially is not valid

Okay that makes sense, but I wonder what legal trouble Google could get into. I hope that fighting a subpeona is not illegal even if you do not win, expecially if you had a valid reason to fight it.

--

Re:You kidding me?

[Liza]

I think Google was asked to fork over records for search queries from certain key words.

Actually, they were asked for all searches and search results over a two month period. IMO, the DOJ is trying to prove that lots of "innocent" searches generate porn results, therefore we need a law to protect children from seeing those "harmful to minors" search results.

Liza

Yep, those bosses need all the help they can get

[tiltowait]

I disagree. Subsidizing evil's still evil. Many are claiming Google's shunning of the government's request has nothing to do with protecting privacy, but rather trade secrets [mediabuyerplanner.com], which could be reverse engineered from making such massive lists (potentially) public. As with the censored Chinese Google News, when it comes to removing content, from Google News sources [pcworld.com] to multiple DMCA complaints [slashdot.org] to the now infamous Google Print caving in to publishers legal threats [lisnews.com], the company has been consistent: they do what's best for stockholder value. I don't see how their slogan can be "do no evil" for much longer.

As for your foreign policy analogies, I'm a bigger fan of Containment [wikipedia.org] than Brinkmanship [wikipedia.org], but that's just because I saw the former work with the USSR and what the latter is accomplishing today.

Re:You kidding me?

[tinkerghost]

Rough history -
1) congress passed legislation saying if it's 'harmful' for kids to see it then the site owner has a legal duty to restrict access in some arbitrary and perfectly pointless way.
2) AG tried to enforce stupid law.
3) SC said some of the law is OK but other parts of it violate free speach - IE asking for a CC# to view a website restricts your ability to speak to the poor and underprivalidged(sp?).
4) AG says it's not so and even if it is so, it's our patriotic duty [wave flag here] to protect children from seeing or reading about sex. (Violence is ok, but Sex is bad - remember this, it's a core tennent to most conservative conversations)
5) AG says to SC, look we'll prove that there's so much smut on the internet that we HAVE to take THIS action and therefore you'll have to reconcider and let us do what we want.
6) AG says to search engines give us 1m random searches and websites so we can prove there is too much smut on the internet.
7) Yahoo,MS etc say OK.
8) Google says WTF?
9) AG takes them to court and tells the judge make them play our game in our sandbox.
10) judge says .....?

My problem with the whole thing is that even if there is so much smut that something should be done (we of course know that parental guidance and monitoring is positively the wrong way to go here), if the SC already said you can't do it the way the law is written, showing there's smut on the internet [say it isn't so] doesn't change the fact that the law restricts freedom of speech and can't be enforced.
IANAL - and this is so vague it's probably worthless, but it's a general summary of what I have been able to piece together.

Re:You kidding me?

[SatanicPuppy]

Here is more information [wikipedia.org] on subpoenas [tba.org]. Basically you have to show up at court, regardless, but once you get there you can argue for the reason why you shouldn't have to provide the stuff they say you should provide. If the judge thinks you're full of it, he/she can cite you for contempt [wikipedia.org], which has a variety of penalties, including fines and/or jail time. Otherwise, he/she can rule that the subpoena is invalid, and say that you don't have to comply.