In April 2002, Germany’s national rail operator, Deutsche Bahn,
raised an action in Germany against Google, the search engine
company, for including links in search results to web pages that
provided instructions on how to sabotage railway systems. The pages
were contained within a publication called Radikal.
Google removed the links immediately and deleted cached copies
of the offending pages. Deutsche Bahn subsequently won a court
order against a Dutch ISP that hosted the articles.
On 23rd April, the Dutch arm of Indymedia received notice from
Deutsche Bahn to remove links to mirror sites which linked to the
offensive material. Indymedia refused to comply and the case went
to the Dutch courts.
The company claimed that by linking to mirrors, it was not
linking directly to illegal material. However, the court ruled that
Indymedia’s practices broke the law.
Indymedia said in a statement:
"The verdict is surprising, since Indymedia
NL does not link directly to illegal articles. Until now, only
direct links to illegal material were forbidden in the Netherlands.
Out of this verdict however, it follows that indirect links to
illegal material are also forbidden, because Indymedia NL´s links
only point to copies of the front page of the German periodical
Radikal. It takes more clicks to reach the illegal articles."
"Indymedia NL considers the ruling a
dramatic limitation of the possibilities of the internet and the
freedom of speech. Indymedia NL will probably try to appeal this
decision out of principal considerations."
