Google and Yahoo! have filtered search results relating to the
names on their Argentine sites but not their international ones,
the companies told internet filtering campaigning organisation the
OpenNet Initiative (ONI).
Yahoo! has blocked all search results for the individuals, and
has published a notice instead of results. That notice, in an
automatic translation, says: "Because of a court order sought by
private parties, we have been forced to temporarily remove some or
all of the search results".
No final court ruling has been made on the cases but temporary
orders have been issued restricting search engines from publishing
search results relating to 100 people including public servants,
judges, models and actors.
Martin Leguizamón Pena has said that he is the lawyer behind 108
applications to Argentinian courts since 2006 seeking the blocking
of Google and Yahoo! search results relating to his clients.
He told Argentina's News Magazine that he had been successful in
80% of the cases and that he took the action to protect the image
rights, privacy and honour of his clients.
Local press reports claim that some of the orders sought by Pena
relate to specific articles, sites or blogs and some relate to the
blocking of anything produced by a particular search term or name
or a combination of search terms or names.
Google's manager of government affairs and public policy for
Latin America Pedro Less Andrade wrote in a Google blog last month
that the court measures "violate both the freedom of expression and
access to information … impacting on the development and investment
in local connectivity services and the information society".
Quotations from his blog posting have been automatically
translated.
Andrade also suggested that Google may appeal some of the orders
if it believed that they are without basis, technically impossible,
disproportionate to the aim behind the order or affect users'
rights to freedom of expression and censorship-free
communication.
The blocking only relates to the Argentinian versions of
Google's and Yahoo!'s search engines. All the material will be
viewable through the .com global versions or through other
countries' versions of the search engines.
Wendy Seltzer founded Chilling Effects, which campaigns to stop
abuses of the law to undermine free speech. She told campaigners
ONI that the Argentinian action was "a telling example of the
fragmentation of the internet via intermediaries. Rather than going
directly to the source of objectionable content, complainers find
someone in the middle who can be persuaded to block access in at
least some locations."
"This kind of takedown often obscures the source of the
objections and removals," she said. "Chilling Effects aims to add
transparency to the process both by showing takedown demands and by
allowing people to compare results across various localized
versions of search engines."
