According to Reuters, Russia has initiated a civil action against Google over the search engine’s alleged failure to censor search results in the country. The potential penalty is trivial: 700,000 roubles (approximately $10,450). Next month, a determination will be made on whether or not the fine will be imposed.  The main issue is that Google reportedly […]

A highly restrictive copyright directive has been backed by the European Parliament that is intended to benefit traditional European news publishers and copyright holders at the possible expense of user-generated content and U.S. internet companies, such as Google.  Back in July, an early version of the directive was rejected. In order for the new rules to […]

The first ever Facebook transparency report has been released, and outlines the amount of content it has identified as breaking Community Standard rules between October 2017 and March 2018.  Based on the data, a majority of the offensive content had action taken against it by Facebook before it was reported by users. The report is part of […]

Early on March 1, The European Commission (EC) issued guidelines and recommendations for the rapid removal of “illegal content” from websites accessible within Europe.  Even though it wasn’t the only content, targeted, the move was aimed primarily at terrorist propaganda. For the EC, they want to see illegal content taken down, following notifications to tech companies, within […]

As of January 1, Germany began to enforce its anti-hate speech and illegal content law (“NetzDG”), which was originally passed in mid-2017.  This law targets publishers and social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube, that have more than 2 million members or users. The law, translated as the Network Enforcement Act requires “obviously illegal” material to be […]

Recently, Google came under fire when search suggestions came up, such as “are women evil” or actual results that question if the Holocaust even happened.  Luckily, there are folks at Google who are not ignoring the issue.  They’re taking time to figure out the best and most comprehensive response. Last week, Danny Sullivan met with a number of […]

There is a case that is going on right now that involves Yelp and a “default judgment” against someone (defendant bird) who wrote up a critical Yelp review about a San Francisco attorney (plaintiff Dawn Hassell )that could dramatically impact the online review economy if the decision is allowed to stand.  A number of major companies, […]

China has, once again, began cracking down on search content.  This crack down is in response, at least partially, to the death of the college sophomore Wei Zexi.  Now, according to Bloomberg, China has begun requiring search engines to “report banned content and verify advertisers’ qualifications.” In the report, it says that any “banned information” can’t […]

Recently, the privacy regulator of France (CNIL) has rejected Google’s arguments against expanding the “right to be forgotten” (RTBF) to the company’s global index.  It’s well known that Google has been limiting RTBF removals to European domains like Google.fr. The privacy regulators in Europe feel that by being given the ability to access Google.com to access “removed” […]

It was announced last month that Google would be making efforts to help eliminate “revenge porn” from making its presence known on their search results by coming up with a system that allows people to report explicit images posted of them without their consent. Microsoft has decided to do the same thing by launched a new reporting […]