Baidu Achieves Victory In U.S. Lawsuit Concerning Censored Search Results

It makes plenty of sense that whenever a particular search engine shows up in court, someone in a particular geographical location must not have been too happy with a certain search result. America, the country where there are lawsuits flying left and right, saw eight folks from New York who made an attempt to actually sue China’s biggest search engine that is known as Baidu, but they failed in their attempt. However, the exact opposite happened, as the plaintiffs happened to be pro-democracy activists who actually pointed their finger at Baidu of de-listing their articles as well as videos for political reasons.

The line of argument was this – censorship actually breached their civil and equal protection rights, as American users of Baidu happened to be unfairly blocked from accessing their work. It was a messy affair, where after going through three years of legal wrangling, a US District Court judge finally dismissed the case, citing that no owner of a search engine ought to have a gun pointed to their head (which is dramatically saying that no one ought to be forced) to list specific websites, simply due to the fact that this act would have breached the owner’s right to freedom of speech.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: baidu