A small Canadian firm has acquired an injunction against Google from the Supreme Court of Canada that is being called the first global de-indexing order.

Equustek, a Vancouver-based maker of networking devices, sued a former distributor called Datalink Technologies. Equustek accused Datalink of illegally re-labeling products and stealing Equustek intellectual property to make its own products.

Datalink initially denied the allegations but then left the province. It continues to do business, selling products worldwide from an unknown location, according to Canadian courts.

That led to Equustek seeking court orders forcing Google to re-arrange its search results. Some 345 Datalink webpages have been de-indexed from Google's Canadian site, per various Canadian court orders. But a court in British Columbia issued a broader order, insisting that Google stop listing Datalink's entire website anywhere in the world. Today, Canada's Supreme Court upheld that order.

The ruling is the "first global de-indexing order," Canadian lawyer Barry Sookman, who represented literary and musical publishers in the case, told The Toronto Star.

"We are carefully reviewing the court’s findings and evaluating our next steps," a Google spokesperson told Ars via e-mail.

“The determinative player”

By a 7-2 vote, the Canadian justices rejected the idea that the worldwide order was a threat to free speech. They noted that Google already alters its search results to de-list child pornography, hate speech, and to comply with DMCA copyright notices in the United States.

"This is not an order to remove speech that, on its face, engages freedom of expression values; it is an order to de-index websites that are in violation of several court orders," wrote Judge Rosalie Abella. "We have not, to date, accepted that freedom of expression requires the facilitation of the unlawful sale of goods."

Google isn't a defendant in the case, and the justices made clear that the company is not liable for any harm to Equustek. But Google is "the determinative player in allowing the harm to occur," and an injunction against the search giant is "the only effective way to mitigate the harm to Equustek," the justices wrote.

Free-speech advocates say that the Canadian ruling will be used to justify government censorship of the Internet.

"There is great risk that governments and commercial entities will see this ruling as justifying censorship requests that could result in perfectly legal and legitimate content disappearing off the Web because of a court order in the opposite corner of the globe," a spokesperson for OpenMedia, a Canadian group that advocates for open communications, told Reuters.

John Bergmayer, an attorney for Public Knowledge, said on Twitter that Canada is joining a list of countries that assert "global jurisdiction over the Internet," which sets a problematic precedent.

"I don't want the UK's crappy libel laws to de facto apply worldwide, most countries don't have fair use, etc. etc.," Bergmayer wrote on Twitter earlier today.

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The BC Civil Liberties Association, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Human Rights Watch all were listed as intervenors supporting Google's case at the Supreme Court.

Music Canada, which represents the Canadian music industry, also chimed in on the case, supporting the injunction request.

"Today's decision confirms that online service providers cannot turn a blind eye to illegal activity that they facilitate," Graham Henderson, president of Music Canada, told the CBC today. "On the contrary, they have an affirmative duty to take steps to prevent the Internet from becoming a black market."

Google is currently compelled to rearrange search results in the European Union due to the EU court rulings around the so-called "Right to be Forgotten." The company continues to battle in French courts over whether those changed search results should apply worldwide.

So far, Google has refused to do so. The case is currently before France's highest court.