The Law and the Internet: De-Indexing, De-Listing: Court Cases that forced Websites to remove things from the Internet Globally

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[Here are just a tiny number of court cases that resulted in material being removed from the Internet permanently, globally. NOTE: When it comes to Trademarks and Copyright laws, the courts will always enforce that globally. When it comes to companies and ownership of things, then the courts will quickly have stuff removed from the Internet. So if you want to know why the Internet has become so boring, it is because, behind the scenes there are LOTS of court cases going on. When I was on Youtube that is where I realised how Youtube is inundated with legal actions. Google owns Yahoo and I'm sure that Google is the most sued company in the world. Even I wanted to sue Google for shutting down my Youtube channels and I did indeed begin looking into it. I even went to Google's offices. I found that they had offices hiding away secretly here in South Africa. They have a physical office that you can walk into, but take special note of this: They do NOT have a South African telephone number that you can phone and they do NOT have a South African email address you can write to. But if you know where to go, you can physically walk into their offices. I did that. I've walked into their offices in Johannesburg. And I spoke directly to their staff and I asked them for their phone number and email address, but their phone number and their email address are American. The reason I went to their offices was to see, if I would be able to find a physical location where I could serve court papers on them if I decided to. And technically, that was possible. I did speak to a lawyer about taking Google/Yahoo to court – but that's a whole discussion for another day. Jan]

Here are a few examples:

European Union v. Google (2018): The European Court of Justice ruled that Google must comply with the "right to be forgotten" by delisting certain search results not only in the European Union but also globally. This ruling addressed the issue of whether a search engine could be required to remove search results globally based on a user’s location, regardless of where the search originated.

Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions Inc. (2017): While not directly related to different content based on location, this case involved Google’s search engine displaying different search results depending on the user’s location. The issue revolved around whether Google could be compelled to de-index certain websites globally to comply with Canadian law, which raised questions about the extraterritorial reach of court orders.

BSA v. LeaseWeb (2010): This case involved a Dutch hosting provider, LeaseWeb, accused of hosting copyrighted material on servers located in the Netherlands but accessible worldwide. The court held that LeaseWeb could be held liable for copyright infringement, even though the content was accessible in multiple jurisdictions.