Google Sued In France and Germany In Test Case Over Privacy

[engine]

Google Inc. GOOG +0.27% was hauled into a French court Wednesday by former Formula One racing head Max Mosley, who wants the Internet giant to scrub its search results of grainy images of a sexual escapade. The images were found to be a privacy breach by a U.K. court, only to pop up elsewhere online.Google Sued In France and Germany In Test Case Over Privacy [online.wsj.com]

As Europe considers tougher new privacy rules that could contain a "right to be forgotten," the cases could help determine the balance between privacy and censorship in an era of pervasive social-media and government surveillance.

"You can't decide now that the context for these links will forever be illicit," Christophe Bigot, a lawyer for Google, told judges during Wednesday's three-hour hearing. "The balance between privacy and free expression is necessarily case by case."

[lucy24]

This would be because Google has deeper pockets than the assorted sites that actually host the offending pictures?

I am not a wild fan of Google-- or any other de facto monopoly-- on principle, but come on.

[piatkow]

As long as G hot link images to be viewed from image search without going to the original site then they must take as much responsibility as the hosting site.