French Court Orders Google To Block Pictures of Ex-F1 Chief Mosley

Virtucon writes "This one goes to the old adage 'closing the stable door after the horse bolted.' A French court on Wednesday ruled that Google must remove from its search results photos of a former Formula One racing chief, Max Mosley, participating in an Nazi-themed orgy. Google could be fined up to 1,000 Euros/day for not complying. What's strange here is that Mosley A) Sued in a French Court B) Didn't go after anybody else other than Google and C) has definitely strange tastes in extracurricular activities. In this day and age it's laughable to think that once your private photos/videos hit the Internet that you have any expectation of reining them in or filtering the embarrassing parts out. Google isn't the only game in town so to speak in terms of Internet search. I wonder if his lawyers checked out Yahoo or WebCrawler?"

why he chose France

[Titus Groan]

because the french have very tight privacy laws - they have rather strict photography laws too, you don't even get freedom of panorama in France. I sued there because he could win there.

This story?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/News-of-the-World-Max-Mosley-Cover.jpg

Who cares ?

brilliant!

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of some mild and uninteresting pictures, when you search for "Max Mosley", you now get hits about something involving Max Moseley, five female prostitutes, and a Nazi S&M sex orgy. Way to go!

And you learn that he is the son of Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, and looking like he stepped out of Monty Python sketch. (I'm assuming "Sir" is not merely an S&M title, but I suppose you can't be sure at this point.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Mosley

Doesn't this have to stop at some point?

[Kubla Kahhhn!]

At some point, doesn't the world just have to say "Sorry, government of France, this is how the internet works and we can't take parts of it out just because someone in France is offended by it"?

This is amusing

[Jody Bruchon]

Somehow I doubt that anyone on Slashdot is offended by the notion of a Nazi-themed orgy. The Internet generation doesn't get shocked very easily anymore. Goatse, Tubgirl, NumberGenderNumberContainer videos, and half the memes ever created are far more offensive than some people having a role-playing orgy behind closed doors.

I believe I just coined the term NumberGenderNumberContainer...

A Huge problem

[b4upoo]

The very nature of the net is such that no nation should be allowed to demand anything at all concerning content. France is a fine nation but the notion that they can have any voice in that which is displayed world wide is absurd. Obviously different groups of people have vastly different morals and beliefs. What the net does is give everyone the ability to be offended half out of their minds. What may be considered a savage crime in one place or an act of perversion in another place is perfectly acceptable in other places. Frankly I do not want any nation having any ability to censor the net. It is up to all of us to step up to the plate and be willing to be shocked, mortified, enraged or degraded in order to maintain freedom. Free people should not vote to restrain the freedom of others.

Re:Why is he special?

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Its like that court in Texas where the Patent Trolls always sue, France has made a few implausible rulings against Google so he went there.

Re:Why is he special?

[Jerry Smith]

For the record, the pictures are available here [lemonparty.org]. They were infamous long before anyone knew it was this Mosley guy (he's nobody to me).

Nobody in the right mind clicks a lemonparty link.