A U.S. judge has blocked a decision by the Canadian Supreme Court that attempted to force Google to delete search results in every country around the world.
U.S. District Judge Edward Davila reportedly claimed the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision was a violation of U.S. laws, in particular the First Amendment, and thus granted Google “a temporary injunction, which means the company can show the search results in the United States,” according to Fortune, who added that the “search results in question are part of an intellectual property dispute between a Canadian industrial firm called Equustek and a rival company that is reportedly misusing Equustek’s trademarks to poach its business.”
“The ruling has created alarm among free speech advocates that courts in other countries, particularly totalitarian ones, will seize on the Canadian decision to justify similar orders, and carry out what amounts to a global form of censorship,” they explained.
In a statement, David Price, a senior product counsel at Google, declared, “We’re pleased with the court’s decision to uphold the legal principle that one country shouldn’t be able to decide what information people in other countries can access online.”
“Undermining this core principle inevitably leads to a world where Internet users are subject to the most restrictive content limitations from every country,” he continued.
In July, it was reported that Google had filed a lawsuit in California contesting the Canadian Supreme Court’s ruling.
In their lawsuit, Google asked the California court to “declare that the rights established by the First Amendment and the Communications Decency Act are not merely theoretical.”
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington and Gab @Nash, or like his page at Facebook.