Google has been given two months to strip all content from its search engine relating to ex-Formula One boss Max Mosley’s lurid sexual shenanigans – first published by News of the Word in 2008 – by a French court.
Pictures of Mosley being spanked by prostitutes dressed as Nazis spread round the Internet following publication by the now-defunct paper, which he successfully sued for £60,000 payout.
However, it has proved virtually impossible for Mosley to get all the images of the orgy removed, and he claims the fact the images are available online for people to search for and view represents is an invasion of his privacy.
In September, Mosley took Google to court to argue that the search engine should be forced to introduce a filter to prevent the material appearing in any search results.
And this week the French court ruled in his favour and ordered Google to find a way to remove links to images of the orgy, giving it two months to establish a method.
In a statement released after the ruling, Google’s associate general counsel Daphne Keller said: “This is a troubling ruling with serious consequences for free expression and we will appeal it.
“Even though we already provide a fast and effective way of removing unlawful material from our search index, the French court has instructed us to build what we believe amounts to a censorship machine.”
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Max Mosley bends Google over and gives it a good spanking after French court victory http://t.co/W1eNWDOBqY #digitalmarketing #data