Published in News

Google tries to block Mosley over images

by on15 January 2015


We do not want to monitor the net

Search engine Google tried to block a lawsuit filed against it by Max Mosley in the High Court in London over access through its search engine to images of the former motor racing chief taking part in a sex party.

Google said it wanted to avoid a legal obligation to monitor and limit the flow of data on the Internet. Mosley, argues the firm is breaching his fundamental right to privacy by allowing users to access the pictures.

The pictures are controversial. They were first published in 2008 by the now-defunct News of the World.  The News of the Screws claimed the pictures showed a Nazi-themed orgy which given the fact Mosley's father Oswald Mosley was a British fascist politician in the 1930s was hugely defamatory.

Max Mosley later won $91,290 in damages from the newspaper when the court ruled the party had no Nazi theme and the story was not in the public interest. Mosley, 74, has remained in the public eye in Britain ever since, mainly as a campaigner for privacy rights and against media intrusion.

Last year he launched legal action against Google and its British subsidiary in July last year, seeking damages and asking the court to compel the search engine to prevent any user accessing the sex party images in future.

Google removed the images from search results in instances where Mosley has notified the firm of specific search terms being used, and has provided the detailed location of the images.

But it said it did not want to set up a filtering system that would prevent users from accessing the images, arguing that would amount to an obligation to monitor the Internet.

This week Google's lawyers argued that Mosley's lawsuit should be thrown out because the images had been so widely available for so long that he had no realistic expectation of privacy left.

They also disputed Mosley's position that Google should be considered a "publisher" of the images for legal purposes.

Mosley has won similar lawsuits against Google in France and Germany.

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