UK: Court rules original publisher not liable for search engine results

06 Apr 10 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized

A publisher should not be held responsible for a libel created by the out-of-context publication of material by a search engine, the High Court has ruled. Even if a snippet has a libellous meaning neither the search engine nor the publisher should be liable, the Court said. Sam Budu took the case against the BBC over articles published on a website in 2004 which detailed his dealings with the Cambridgeshire police. A first article on the BBC’s website said that a person had been denied a job when it was discovered he was an illegal immigrant. The second and third articles named Budu but detailed his counter-claims that he was in the UK legally. Budu sued over both stories, and the snippets which appeared in Google, arguing that they constituted a separate publication of the articles.

Russia: plans to launch state-controlled search engine

30 Mar 10 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized

PBK Daily reports that the government is planning to launch a “national search engine” which would aim at satisfying “state-orientated” needs such as “facilitating access to safe information” and “filtering websites which feature banned content”. It has been suggested that the move may be designed to topple the growing power of Google in Russia. Although Google controls only 22% of the market, its share has been growing rapidly against its nearest competitor, Yadex. Yadex is increasingly coming under government control. Russian authorities have recently stepped-up efforts to tighten their control of internet use. From 1 Aoril,  anyone who registers a .ru domain will need to provide legal proof of their identity.

“Sex” censored on Microsoft search engine

04 Jun 09 | Index Index, minipost

Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft is varying search results of the term “sex” dependent on the country. The UK, US and all European countries produce long lists of results but Arabian countries, China, India and several others produce no results leading to accusations of censorship. Read more here