• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 8, 2017

Digital rights groups are backing Google's request to block enforcement of a Canadian order requiring the company to remove search results.

The takedown order "sets a dangerous and unbounded precedent," the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other organizations write in a proposed friend-of-the-court brief submitted Monday to U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California. "If one foreign court can impose its speech-restrictive rules on the entire Internet -- despite the conflict between its rules and those of a foreign jurisdiction -- the norms of expectations of all Internet users are at risk."

The groups are weighing in on Google's long-running battle with the technology company Equustek. The dispute dates to 2012, when Equustek asked a judge in British Columbia to order Google to remove search results for Datalink Technologies, which allegedly stole trade secrets from Equustek and engaged in counterfeiting.

The Canadian court issued a worldwide injunction prohibiting Google from displaying search results for Datalink and its products, which allegedly were derived from trade secrets. That order was upheld in June by Canada's Supreme Court.

Last month, Google sought a declaratory judgment invalidating the order, arguing that it goes against free speech principles. The company also asked Davila to issue an injunction blocking enforcement in the U.S.

Google told Davila that Equustek didn't seek to prevent other search engines from displaying results for Datalink, and hasn't prevented Amazon from selling Datalink products.

The EFF, along with Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, are asking Davila to grant Google's request.

Corynne McSherry, the EFF's legal director, says the Canadian takedown order "runs contrary to core values in the United States," adding that the order not only affects Google, but also potentially deprives Google's users of information.

"Just as web search engines have a right to provide search results, users have a corollary right to receive those results," the organizations write in their legal papers. "They do not lose that right simply because some of the information on a website involves products rather than explicit social commentary or other forms of speech."

McSherry adds that other courts have ordered web platforms to take down information that may be protected under free speech principles. "I don't think this issue's going to go away, much as we'd like it to," she says.

Among other instances, regulators in France have said the so-called "right to be forgotten" requires Google to remove some search results worldwide. The right to be forgotten requires search engines to remove links to embarrassing material about Europeans at their request, after weighing their privacy rights against the public interest in the information. 

Google argues that the right to be forgotten only requires the company to delete links from its European search pages, like Google.fr, and not its worldwide search results. Europe's highest court could soon decide that question.