Court Rules Google's Search Results Qualify As Free Speech 137
wabrandsma writes with this news from Ars Technica: The regulation of Google's search results has come up from time to time over the past decade, and although the idea has gained some traction in Europe (most recently with "right to be forgotten" laws), courts and regulatory bodies in the U.S. have generally agreed that Google's search results are considered free speech. That consensus was upheld last Thursday, when a San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled in favor of Google's right to order its search results as it sees fit.
I am sure there will be a challenge (Score:3)
Maybe it will get appealed to the SCOTUS. Or congress will change the legislation relevant to this. Remember what happened to Rick Santorum...
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Why would there be a challenge? And if there were, why would SCOTUS agree to hear it? Both the Supreme Court and Republicans love the idea of corporations as people, hence free speech rights for these groups. If the liberal jurisdiction supports big corporations' free speech rights, how much more will SCOTUS and the Republican majority?
--MyLongNickname
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> I always wondered what kind of imbecile thinks that people stop being people just because they form a group.
People stop being "people" when they lose all moral awareness and are absolved from all personal responsibility.
A group of people does not have the same attributes as it's individuals. This is especially true when the group is specifically formed to avoid moral and legal responsibility.
At best. That is a child or a house pet.
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A group of people does not have the same attributes as it's individuals.
You do realize that most political advocacy groups in the United States are incorporated, right? Citizens United was about one such organization that the FEC attempted to stop from releasing a video about Hillary Clinton in the run up to the 2008 Presidential Primaries. Do you seriously not see a problem when a Federal regulatory agency attempts to stop a political advocacy group from releasing materials about a candidate for the highest office in the land? Read the oral arguments for Citizens United, th
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So who gets to decide which groups are 'specifically formed to avoid moral and legal responsibility'? You?
Corporations are not 'specifically formed to avoid moral and legal responsibility'. They are formed to have limited FINANCIAL responsibility. My parents owned a pharmacy. It was a corporation. Dad was the president. Dad held most of the stock, some employees also had some. Did they do this so they could avoid moral and legal responsibility? No, they did it for the same reason everyone does - so
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Good thing corporations don't do shit like that.
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People stop being "people" when they lose all moral awareness and are absolved from all personal responsibility.
Good thing that forming a corporation doesn't remove all moral awareness and absolve anyone from all personal responsibility then, isn't it? Otherwise you'd have decided ad-hoc that people who form corporations don't deserve inalienable rights.
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This is only true if the group is Corporations (no free speech) but other groups get full and extra protection (Unions) because "workers" are more important than "owners".
Re:I am sure there will be a challenge (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, no, that's not true. Incorporation allows to move around companies independently of the people owning and/or running it. Also, they protect the individual to some degree from bad luck affecting the company. Obviously, if the company does something illegal the people behind it will be prosecuted, too. At least, that's the way laws are constructed, so for example, if you incorporate a company in the US that trades cocaine with Colombia, don't expect to be immune from prosecution when the company gets caught.
Re:I am sure there will be a challenge (Score:4, Informative)
Another way to put this (as I understand it - IANAL) is that the corporation shields individuals from civil liability (getting sued) but not from criminal liability (going to jail).
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Another way to put this (as I understand it - IANAL) is that the corporation shields individuals from civil liability (getting sued) but not from criminal liability (going to jail).
No. Individuals, including directors and employees, can still be sued for their actions on behalf of the corporation. Incorporation only limits the liabilities of the shareholders for the debts incurred by the corporation.
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No. The only protection is that no one except the corporation is liable for the corporation's debts. You can be found personally liable in a lawsuit, in which case the debt is yours personally and not the corporation's, and the corporation as such offers no protection.
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I'm under the impression that a judge can also rule that a corpoation is a "sham" in some cases, and may hold the owner(s) liable for the corporations debts in that case. Basically you can't form a business to go around defrauding people, then bankrupt your business and walk off. You have to at least be convincing about it...
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It's very difficult to pierce the corporate veil for a properly setup and run company (as in run by the letter of the law, including previous rulings).
I worked for a company that essentially dissolved itself, moving almost all assets, to a new company, and plaintiffs were still not able to get past the block (certain amounts had to be left behind, and most debt was moved, it was over a dispute with a union that the new company was formed, but lawsuits filed after the switch were not able to get through).
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independently of the people owning and/or running
Good job confirming his statement.
Obviously, if the company does something illegal the people behind it will be prosecuted, too
In what world are you living in... How often has a company that done something illegal ever had the people behind it get prosecuted. Small slap on the write fine for the company, then back to breaking the law.
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You named 3, out of a countless number of crimes. note I did not say it never happened, but the point was that it is so infrequent as to seem to never happen.
Re:I am sure there will be a challenge (Score:4, Interesting)
Umm, no. Hence the Limited Liability Corporation.
Note that anyone who owns stock is one of the "people behind it ("it" being the corporation)", so your view of the way corporate law words would make YOU liable for the actions of any corporation whose stock is part of your 401k....
Fortunately, the rest of us live in a world of Limited Liability Corporations, where the owners are not held liable for the actions of the managers....
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Umm, no. Hence the Limited Liability Corporation.
Note that anyone who owns stock is one of the "people behind it ("it" being the corporation)", so your view of the way corporate law words would make YOU liable for the actions of any corporation whose stock is part of your 401k....
Fortunately, the rest of us live in a world of Limited Liability Corporations, where the owners are not held liable for the actions of the managers....
Reading is god damn fundamental. How in gods name did you jump from his obvious premise that the people carrying out the act wouldn't be shielded to shareholders who had no operational involvement would be held responsible ?
I eagerly await your overly complicated justification of why your premise is reasonable.
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You cannot be held liable for the corporation did. You can still be held liable for what YOU did, even if you did it on behalf of the corporation.
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Funny I think a world in which you did face liability limited to your ownership would make for a lot nicer America. So you have 25 shares of XYZ corp, if XYZ if fined, has unpaid debts etc, incurs a civil liability etc, you should be proportionally responsible for that after XYZs assets have been exhausted. If the remaining debt is 5 Billion and you own .000002% of the shares out standing than you should be on the hook for 10K.
My guess is if the owners could be held accountable, we would have boards of di
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Holy crap that is stupid. Here is what would really happen.
Creditors would be extending credit essentially risk-free. Great for creditors.
Rich people and large investors would have people constantly looking for signs of trouble (much as they already do), and would dump their ownership at the drop of a hat
Ordinary investors (retirees, 401Ks, etc) would be left not only losing the value of their investment (which happens today), but would be on the hook for all the debts of the company? What fucking sense
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One can only assume that the organization of said entities would restructure along with the now even-more-hawkish investors so that they would become good citizen corporations, instead of hives of scum and villainy.
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That would effectively destroy the stock market, as nobody would want to own stock in a corporation that might be drained of assets and left in debt. The most money I personally have in any one stock is $60K-$70K (it's volatile). For that amount of money, I'm not going to be able to justify the vigilance it would take to avoid that.
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If the company does wrongdoing, then the individuals involved are protected.
No. Incorporation does not protect individuals from any criminal liability. It also does not protect directors or employees from most civil liabilities. It only protects shareholders from financial liability for debts incurred by the corporation. So if you buy a share of stock, the value can go to zero, but it cannot go negative. Creditors fully understand this, and take it into account when they extend credit to a corporation. For small corps, they usually require the one or more directors to persona
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Functionally, it seems to protect individuals from all but the most egregious actions, so a company can perform illegal or negligent acts with no individual in the company being sued or prosecuted.
Re:I am sure there will be a challenge (Score:5, Informative)
No I dont remember what happened to Rick Santorum.
Elighten me.
The only thing I can remember about Rick Santorum is how he repeatedly makes a fool of himself, by saying things like "President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob."
Or how he was pro choice until he ran for Congress....
Or compared the ACA to apartheid....
Or how he to believes global arming is a hoax and junk science....in his so very expert scientific opinion....
Or how its also his, very expert, opinion that is tons of tons of coal and oil left, more than enough for centuries of use....
Or how he though they were just killin old folks in the Netherlands...
Or how he proposed that the National Weather Service not be allowed to release weather data to the public for free...even though we already paid for it via taxes and it's their job, cause it might compete with for profit companies who sell weather data...
Or how wants to change the American Legal system so it aligns with the Bible...while at the same time opposing the idea of Sharia Law, and somehow maintaining that his goal is totally different...
Or how he stated that the Right to Privacy doesn't exist in the Constitution, which was how he defending the banning of homosexuality under sodomy laws (you know, "what happens in private between consenting adults is no one's business"....well Santorum thought it was his business)...
Guess I remember more than I thought.
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Oh, he is also opposed to libertarianism within the Republican Party and wants to kick it out of the party.
So there's one plus in his favor.
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Libertarians are hated by both parties for the exact opposite reasons, which is to say for the exact same reasons: the features of each party that make it a massive blight on human life.
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Re:I am sure there will be a challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, let's enlighten you, since you asked.
Some technically inclined homosexual people, who were tired of Santorum using them as both a legal and verbal punching bag, got together and decided that they'd name something kinda gross after him. Then they used their technical prowess to make that the new definition for "Santorum" the top google result for that search.
The OP thinks that this kind of political protest is a reason why the governments wouldn't view google search results as free speech, but it's quite clear that the opposite is true.
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that is kind of funny.
I wasnt really ranting against the OP, just against Santorum.
I just had no idea what he was referring to as I had never heard that story and google wasnt turning anything up.
On the one hand I hope he runs again, for the entertainment value.
On the other hand...there is a danger, remote, but it exists, that he could win.
Re: I am sure there will be a challenge (Score:1)
Hardly technically inclined. And hardly a group of homosexuals.
It was proposed in a column of Savage Love (Dan savage is not technical), and acted upon (after the definition contest) by his readers, which I suspect are majority heterosexuals.
Not trying to nip pick, but portraying an act of protest with broad support as a homosexual conspiracy plays into the right's opinion of who wants equality, and who is appalled by people such as santorum.
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A fair point. I cop to my ignorance of the details. Thanks for the clarification.
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Not trying to nip pick
Oh the irony...
*nitpick [wikipedia.org]
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Or how he stated that the Right to Privacy doesn't exist in the Constitution, which was how he defending the banning of homosexuality under sodomy laws (you know, "what happens in private between consenting adults is no one's business"....well Santorum thought it was his business)...
I'm not defending Santorum at all because I think he's pretty stupid, but the right to privacy does not exist in the Constitution. It's never mentioned. The Supreme Court has ruled that such a right is inferred by the other things in the Constitution, but strictly speaking he does have a valid point. A different Supreme Court such as the current one might well have come to the other conclusion that if it's not mentioned explicitly, it doesn't exist.
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It is because it is very heavily implied that I must take the stance that it does exist in the document.
I would hold that an implied existence, particularly existence that is foundational to many pillars of our legal system, is existence.
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The Constitution states and presumes there are other unenumerated rights not listed. So for a law against gay sex, you have to ask the next question: What in the Constitution grants government the power to regulate it?
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So for a law against gay sex, you have to ask the next question: What in the Constitution grants government the power to regulate it?
ICC.
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I personally see:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
As a right to privacy. It is spelled out, not just stated that it exists. The edges of what that means for legislating things is in the jurisdiction of the courts.
Responsibilitiy (Score:5, Interesting)
So, if Google's search results are considered free speech, do they also have the same responsibilities as other forms of free speech.
What if you search for a person and the results incorrectly suggests that the person is a pedophile? Does that qualify as libel, or is that suddenly not Google's problem?
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Anyway, it isn't google's problem, someone else wrote "person A is a pedophile", not google. And if you read that and say "hey, that's true!" and tell your friends, should it be your responsibility too?
Internet is full of people saying lies about other companies, or saying lies about history events, or saying lies about news, and so on, facebook is full of that.. so, should we erase all of that? I think the responsibility is in you, in taking serious or not
Re:Responsibilitiy (Score:5, Funny)
So, if Google's search results are considered free speech, do they also have the same responsibilities as other forms of free speech.
Hey I've just looked this theater up on Google and it says that it's on FIRE!
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What I wonder is how is text generated by computer, by algorithm, considered "speech" ?
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What I wonder is how is text generated by computer, by algorithm,
programmed by people
considered "speech" ?
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The algorithm that produces the search results, and the order in which they appear is clearly crafted with intentions that its results are predictable based of the knowledge they applied to it. The order is akin to free speech, and the results are chosen by Google. This is merely expressing that they are right to choose the order they see fit in what they see published.
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Sorry that comment was meant for drywolf
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but do they legally consider that as "speaking" and "expressing thoughts in the marketplace of ideas" when a computer program gives an output?
some outputs i can see saying yes (print Manifesto).
but i have trouble seeing the same logic applied to search results, or other computation.
that kind of output, that of program, isnt so much ME the programmer saying anything,
but actually me asking the computer to do a task and provide me an answer to a question i didnt know.
and if i didnt know, how can it be consider
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It's Google's software, so whatever it comes up with is Google's responsibility (however far that extends). Legally, responsibility is a human thing, and if you set up a program that does something harmful, you're on the hook.
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The point isn't the exact text, but the ranking of websites in the search results.
From the article:
So CoastNews was upset because it wasn't #1 in Google's listings. They sued Google to try to force Google to make them #1 and lost. Google has the right
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the idea of using a different product is fine. i have no problem there.
my problem is justifying or protecting google's delivered product under the concept of free speech itself.
to me that's not the proper way to protect it. I see the algorithm as a dumb black box.
it gets an input, does some computation, and it spits out an output.
i see the output is an answer to the question (input) not known in advance.
and i have trouble seeing that computational output as "speech".
i feel there should be a better way to pr
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and "free speech" shouldnt be a protection against those laws. kind of like using the 1st Amendment to protect the practice of discrimination, as some have been wont to do recently)
The first amendment contains more than the right to free speech. It also contains the right of free association which is what is used to defend discriminatory practices.
It also contains freedom of the press which I think much more closely fits the situation of Google's search results algorithm. Google is allowed to publish what it wants however it wants, within the bounds of libel/slander and related (e.g. fraud) laws. So, while the results of the algorithm may not be "speech", Google's right to publish
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What I wonder is how is text generated by computer, by algorithm, considered "speech" ?
The correct question, thst any citizen of a free society should be asking, is "Where in the hell does the Constitution aithorize government to re-order computer-generated results?
In any case, Google, i.e. its owners, can, by the act of publishing it, say it is their speech regardless of origin. The government cannot touch.
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Do US credit ratings agencies use free speech as a defence against keeping detailed files on people and then selling the information to other companies? Or are there some legal limits on what they are allowed to "say"? If so, why is Google not governed by the same rules?
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In the EU credit rating agencies are not allowed to report bankruptcies beyond a certain age, or spent criminal convictions. I was asking if that was the case in the US, or if those things are basically marks on your permanent record.
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That said, sometimes debt companies try to avoid that law and you have to sue them to remove debts cleared by bankruptcy - which often costs more than the debt would have cost to pay off.
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Right, so back to my point, how come credit reference agencies are required to stop recording bankruptcies after 7 years but Google is not? Both supply information about a person as a commercial service... I'm failing to see a real difference. A bank looking for a credit reference can just ask Google for data, the same way they can ask a credit reference agency.
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Not Google's problem (Score:2)
So, if Google's search results are considered free speech, do they also have the same responsibilities as other forms of free speech. What if you search for a person and the results incorrectly suggests that the person is a pedophile? Does that qualify as libel, or is that suddenly not Google's problem?
It's not Google's problem to report that somebody else made a libelous claim any more than if you tell your neighbor "Hey, that guy John Doe down the street put on the internet that you're a convicted child molester but I know that's not true", your neighbor would have a legal claim against John Doe, not against you for telling him. The fact that Google reports a search result doesn't make them responsible for the content in the USA. Things might be different in Europe though.
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What if you search for a person and the results incorrectly suggests that the person is a pedophile?
The only problem arises when you believe it. Google isn't responsible. The reader is. The reader is responsible for how he uses and reacts to what he sees. Google has no responsibility whatsoever, except to filter the results the the users' desires, not the state's
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I can't help but spot the word "suggest," as it's so critical. Forget Google: what if a natural person incorrectly suggests someone else is a pedophile? That wouldn't normally be libel, would it? (Would that be libel even in the UK, where the libel standards are so relatively loose? Serious question.)
I can tell you as a reader, there is a huge night-and-day difference between re
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It's not-so-suddenly non Google's problem -- specifically it's not Google's problem ever since the passage of the Communications Decency Act and the section 230(c) immunity [cornell.edu] in back in 1996.
If you search for a
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I interpret Google's search results being regarded as speech as recognizing that Google can choose how to tell people what information Google has indexed on various web sites. In other words, when Google crawls the web, builds an index, then allows you to conduct searches against their index, they can return the results to you however they want to. If you don't like it, you can build your own web-crawling, indexing, and search engines and have at it.
As such, Google is just telling people what is out ther
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Someone who just tries to get a brief idea of who someone is might just glance over it and get the wrong idea.
Then whose fault is that, for believing something without actual evidence?
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Legally*, somebody writing something false about me, or strongly implying something false, and me suffering because of that, constitutes libel, and I can sue. It doesn't matter how dumb and gullible the people who believe the libel and act to my disadvantage are**. If Google makes it look like I'm a pedophile or terrorist, they are legally liable if there's any consequences.
*I'm not actually a lawyer, so this is the opinion of a guy without any relevant professional qualifications. If you think you ha
Nothing to do with freedom of speech of 1st amendm (Score:3)
While I agree with the ruling, I don't see how the first amendment applies. It states that "Congress shall make no law..." but since this was a civil case, and did not involve congress, how does the first amendment apply? Google should win the case simple because Google can do whatever they want in their search results. It is as simple as that. Applying the term "free speech" or "first amendment" to a computer generated algorithm seems like a slippery slope to me.
I just read the ruling: the case was dismissed because "the claims asserted against it arise from constitutionally protected activity..." so nothing to get excited about here...
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It was a lawsuit claiming Google broke a law. If there can be no law, there can be no lawsuit.
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It was a lawsuit claiming Google broke a law.
Not it was not. No one claimed Google broke any law, and the government was not on either side of the case. This was a civil case, where someone thought Google was treating them unfairly.
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From TFA (emphasis mine):
The owner of a website called CoastNews, S. Louis Martin, argued that Google was unfairly putting CoastNews too far down in search results, while Bing and Yahoo were turning up CoastNews in the number one spot. CoastNews claimed that violated antitrust laws. It also took issue with Google's refusal to deliver ads to its website after CoastNews posted photographs of a nudist colony in the Santa Cruz mountains.
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Okay, I stand corrected. So they invoked antitrust law. Maybe first amendment angle was just to get people riled up. Arggh, I think legal reporting is almost as bad as technology reporting. Although overall arstechnica is pretty good on that.
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It was a lawsuit claiming Google broke a law.
Not it was not. No one claimed Google broke any law, and the government was not on either side of the case. This was a civil case, where someone thought Google was treating them unfairly.
Are you kidding?!? It was specifically a claim that Google broke a law - 15 U.S.C. 1–7 by not ranking using the same criteria as Bing and Yahoo (which is ridiculous anyway, since Yahoo is "powered by Bing!" so of course it has the same rankings).
You can read more about the Sherman Antitrust Act here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
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I'm intrigued by this theory that, if two corporations act differently, without any collaboration, that's a violation of anti-trust law.
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It was a lawsuit claiming Google broke a law.
Not it was not. No one claimed Google broke any law, and the government was not on either side of the case. This was a civil case, where someone thought Google was treating them unfairly.
Even though the government was not a plaintiff or defendant, it is still our laws that are being used to determine if the lawsuit wins. In this particular case it was anti-trust laws which were being examined.
Re:Nothing to do with freedom of speech of 1st ame (Score:4, Informative)
I think the quote from UCLA law professor Eugene Volok in the article stated it best:
Think of Google as a massive guidebook. You ask it for information on X and it returns a list of results that it thinks (based on the algorithms) best match X. If someone made a list of "Top 10 Restaurants in New York City" and a restaurant owner was upset that his restaurant didn't make the list, would he be able to sue to get his included as the #1 restaurant in NYC? Of course not. The list publisher has the right to determine who they think are the top 10 restaurants. Likewise, Google has the right to determine who they think are the top matches for any given search.
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So this is actually a freedom of the press issue?
That at least seems to be more relevant, make more sense, and avoids expanding this whole "corporations are people" nonsense.
You can do the right thing and still do it for the wrong reason and manage to cause collateral damage. This is another fine case of that.
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A few other people chimed in and pointed out quotes indicating that the lawsuit might have been based on antitrust claims. That makes more sense than the first amendment thing.
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I think that is a very true and logical assessment. It's just unfortunate that Google has become so ubiquitous. People can choose to use another search engine, but rarely do. It's already very difficult to run a business if Google isn't putting your business high in their ranks. I believe for the time being the listing process is mostly working, but as they continue on I worry that Google could become the gatekeepers of the internet. Pay the fee and kiss the ring or the internet will never know you exist.
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True, but if you are going to sue Google, you had better be able to prove that Google lowered your ranking with malicious intent. That is, not because you weren't following SEO rules that they apply to all websites but because Google just decided "we don't like this guy" and ranked you lower. If your argument is "we want to be the first listing and we're going to file suit to make this so", then you deserve to lose.
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Without Congress creating the court, how can there be a civil case? The court's decisions would be unenforcible, and they wouldn't have laws by which to judge cases anyway.
Ordered from.... (Score:2)
You mean, to present them from least relevant to totally irrelevant?
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If "totally irrelevant" is a member of set A, the least relevant member of set A is "totally irrelevant."
Therefore set A has only one member, or it's a multiset with multiple values of "totally irrelevant" present.
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Because "totally" and "completely" definitely aren't synonyms and redundant.
About time ... (Score:2)
Google is a business and has every right to be as silly as the Enquirer if it wants to be. And ... ... where are all the OTHER brazillion search engines in all this?
Google, Google, Google, why is it always Google? Momma always did like Google, best.
Would this apply to The Pirate Bay as well? (Score:1)
And similar sites? After all, they don't host the content, they merely provide a search engine for the content.
Legal double standard in 3...2...1...
Historic moment: (Score:2)
The California Superior Courts (Score:2)
It isn't always clear at a distance where a state court stands in the larger scheme of things and how much weight should be given its decisions.
In California, a Superior Court is simply one of 58 consolidated county and municipal trial courts.
Before June 1998, California's trial courts consisted of superior and municipal courts, each with its own jurisdiction and number of judges fixed by the Legislature. In June 1998, California voters approved Proposition 220, a constitutional amendment that permitted the judges in each county to merge their superior and municipal courts into a ''unified,'' or single, superior court. As of February 2001, all of California's 58 counties have voted to unify their trial courts.
Superior Courts [ca.gov]
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So your rights are not really rights, but are privileges granted provided you don't do some other entirely legal thing? Fuck you.
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They are your individual rights. They are not your collective rights when you choose to become part of some collective. You can still exercise your rights outside of the collective. Nothing is stopping that.
The corporation is a legal fiction with limited moral awareness and should be treated as such.
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Individuals can work in groups, and yet individuals working in groups someone lose their rights just because they're not working as individuals? How authoritarian of you.
You can still exercise your rights outside of the collective.
Where does the US constitution say you lose your free speech rights if you work in a group?
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Where does the US constitution say you lose your free speech rights if you work in a group?
Right next to where it says your conglomerate has the rights of a person.
I love how far this can be extended, as well. Corporate armies? Sounds awesome.
The obvious thing you're missing, is that the rights of the individuals within the groups were never infringed. The rights of the group were infringed, and the ability to infringe on a group is literally enshrined into US case law, so long as it's not a protected one.
But hey, when "Right to Work" is a euphemism for "abridging the rights of 2 people (cor
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Individuals can vote. Corporations can't. Individuals that are stockholders and/or employees of a corporation do not lose the right to vote. This not not considered "los[ing] their rights".
Similarly, individuals have free speech. Even if corporations don't, each and every individual connected with the corporation still has free speech. Some will doubtless agree with the corporation, and will speak in its favor.
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Tell that to any of *MANY* organzations which have incorporated such as Debian (Software in the Public Interest, Inc.), the FSF (Free Software Foundation, Inc.), the American Cancer Society (American Cancer Society, Inc.), the ACLU (ACLU is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and the ACLU Foundation is a 501(c)(4) corporation), not to mention many news organizations. Banging on the "corporations aren't people" theme is a mark of frustration; keeping it up is pretty much an exercise in petulance. If you wan
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Why is a group of people who incorporate suddenly non-human, but a normal group apparently gets free speech rights? More importantly, where does the first amendment make such an exception to free speech rights?
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DMCA does not trump free speech. However, you have no 'right' to use someone else's website to make your speech, so your free speech is not impacted by the DMCA.
Re: (Score:2)
Then you should demand a refund from Google!