Google slapped with lawsuit over man's salacious images
Former Formula One racing head Max Mosley has requested that images of him at a sex party be removed from the search engine.
Google was driven into a French court Wednesday by former Formula One racing head Max Mosley over images from a sex party.
Mosley on Wednesday requested that the French court force Google to remove from its search results and image data store all photos and videos related to a role-playing sex romp he participated in back in 2008, according to the Wall Street Journal. At that time, News Corp.'s now-defunct News of the World published video footage of Mosley with several women engaging in sexual acts.
Soon after the depictions were posted online, Mosley won a case in a UK court, which agreed with him that his privacy had been breached. With his attention now turned to Google, Mosley wants the company in both France and Germany to filter out any mention or images related to his romp.
Google, which has been slapped with similar lawsuits in the past, has argued that it shouldn't be forced to automatically filter out the images. Instead, the company has said that it will remove individual links presented to it by Mosley, but will not set up an automatic-filtering service.
The case again drums up the debate between privacy advocates and censorship detractors, and questions the extent to which an individual should be able to control what is said about them or depicted about them on the Internet.
The French court plans to issue a ruling on the Mosley case on October 21. Regardless of which side wins, the other party will reserve the right to appeal.