A Canadian court in British Columbia has announced its ruling in the Equustek Solutions v. Jack case. Equustek Solutions, a manufacturer of network devices, accused Jack, a group of its former employees, of manufacturing similar products using stolen technology. Justice Fenlon ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, but this is not what makes the case outstanding. The court ordered Google to block links leading to Jack from its search engine. The Justice stated that since Jack distributed its products mainly through the Internet, Google was unwittingly facilitating the sale of illegally manufactured equipment.
What is even more astonishing is that the decision of the British Columbia court applies not only to the province or even Canada, but to the whole world. It is worth mentioning that recently, the European Court of Justice made Google remove irrelevant personal information if users themselves prove that it is such (the so-called “right to be forgotten”). But the European court limited the decision to its own jurisdiction, that is, the EU.
Experts believe that this is a very dangerous trend. The talks about censorship on the Internet mostly concern authoritarian regimes. But similar decisions made by purely democratic countries pose a bigger threat to the freedom of the global network.
Google has the right to appeal the court decision within 14 days, and the corporation intends to use this right.
