The Internet Commerce Coalition, an organization made up of Internet service providers and e-commerce companies, is siding with Google in its high profile battle with Mississippi
Attorney General Jim Hood.
The group is asking U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate in Jackson, Miss. to prohibit Hood from enforcing a demand that Google to turn over documents relating to
copyright infringement by outside parties, including companies indexed in its search engine.
Wingate is scheduled to hear arguments in the matter on Friday.
The ISPs and e-commerce
organization argue in a friend-of-the-court brief that Hood doesn't have the right to subpoena Google for those documents because Congress has enacted federal legislation governing copyright
infringement on the Internet.
“The reliable Internet service upon which practically every American has come to rely will be seriously threatened if the court fails to enjoin the Attorney
General’s Subpoena and enforcement efforts,” the Internet Commerce Coalition argues in a friend-of-the-court brief filed this week. “Internet service providers would suddenly have to
attempt to comply not just with federal law, but with the divergent common law and statutes of fifty states, and the varying enforcement priorities of a host of state officials.”
The
organization goes on to argue that imposing new compliance obligations on ISPs “would unquestionably degrade the reliability and speed of the Internet and would threaten the public
interest.”
The filing marks the latest turn in a dispute between Google and Hood that erupted into litigation late last year, when Google sought a court order prohibiting Hood from
enforcing a subpoena for “millions” of documents relating to illegal activity by third parties. Google, which had been in talks with Hood for many months, only went to court several days
after documents released in the Sony hack revealed that a lawyer for the Motion Picture Association of America drafted a set of demands that Hood sent to the company.
Google argues that the
federal Communications Decency Act provides that intermediaries like itself are immune from liability by making available content created by others. The company said in court papers that Hood has
spent nearly two years pressuring it to “remove third-party content he disfavors from its search engine and YouTube video-sharing service.”
Hood counters that he's investigating
whether Google has violated Mississippi's consumer protection law, which prohibits businesses from engaging in deceptive and unfair trade practices. Hood contends that the material he requested
“is directly related” to discovering whether Google violated the Mississippi Consumer Protection Act.
But the Internet Commerce Coalition argues that Hood can't “use state
consumer protection law as a tool to enforce rights existing under federal copyright law.”
The group says its members “have built their businesses in reliance on the fact that
there is a single national law” covering copyright infringement allegations.
“They rely on the fact that when they comply with the nationally-applicable notice and take-down
procedures, they have substantial immunity from liability,” the organization argues. “The Internet that has prospered in reliance on this law, and the public interest in reliable, fast
Internet service, is threatened by the Attorney General’s effort to invade a field of exclusive federal regulation.”