Google only complies with about two-thirds of court takedown orders, company says

The internet giant published data detailing the number of "content removal requests" and user information requests it received from courts and Governments, or Government bodies such as the police, between July and December last year.

Google said that it complied with 68% of the 467 removal requests it received from courts during the period, which covered a total of 7,000 separate pieces of content. It also said that it had complied with 43% of the "more informal requests" it was issued with. There were 561 such requests covering 4,979 items, it said.

The company revealed that the requests it had received contained "alarmingly" attempts to quash "political speech."

"This is the fifth data set that we’ve released. And just like every other time before, we’ve been asked to take down political speech," Dorothy Chou, senior policy analyst at Google, said in a company blog. "It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect – Western democracies not typically associated with censorship."

Outlining some examples of the removal requests that it had been issued with, Google detailed how Spain's data protection regulator had asked it to remove 270 links to blogs and other websites from its search results that contained references to individuals and public figures. The Pakistani Government also asked Google to takedown six YouTube videos that "satirized the Pakistan Army and senior politicians." Google said it did not comply with either request.

Google also announced that the number of content removal requests it received from the US during the last six months of 2011 was more than double what had been requested be removed by the US in the first half of last year. The company said it refused a request from a local law enforcement body in the US which had asked it to remove 1,400 YouTube videos for alleged harassment.

Further requests from Poland and Canada were refused, Google said.

"We received a request from the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development to remove a search result that criticized the agency as well as eight more that linked to it," the company's Transparency Report said. "We did not comply with this request."

"We received a request from the Passport Canada office to remove a YouTube video of a Canadian citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet. We did not comply with this request," the report added.

However, Google did reveal that it had complied with a removal request sent to it by the UK's Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) on terrorism grounds. Google deleted five YouTube user accounts, removing 640 videos in the process, because the accounts violated YouTube's 'Community Guidelines'. The rules prohibit users posting videos that show bomb making, among other things.

Google said it complied with 58% of the 12 court orders to remove content that it had received from UK courts, and that it complied with 54% of the 37 requests it had received from the UK Government or related agencies.