Child porn for the masses, profits for Google?
Websearch giant Google has been zeroed in by New York Nassau county representative Jeffrey Toback in an unusual lawsuit. In light of news trends in the past few weeks though, not entirely unexpected. The suit outlines Google as being negligent in preventing people from attaining access to child pornography sites through Google’s AdWords links, saying that the company ignores the details so long as the cash flows in. The case however doesn’t sound like it will go very far if the Communications Decency Act has anything to say about it, protecting companies from liability so long as they acted faithfully in providing countermeasures against such materials.
A Google representative said Friday that the company prohibits child pornography in its products and removes all such content whenever the company finds or is made aware of it. “We also report it to the appropriate law enforcement officials and fully cooperate with the law enforcement community to combat child pornography,” spokesman Steve Langdon said in an e-mail.
Langdon pointed to the content policy for Google’s AdWords sponsored links service, which broadly prohibits “promotion of child pornography or other non-consensual material.” Langdon also noted that Google offers a filtering tool called SafeSearch that aims to block offensive content in search results
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