A French court on Wednesday ruled that Google must remove from its search results photos of a former Formula One racing chief participating in an orgy.

Max Mosley, one-time president of the International Automobile Federation, sued Google in 2011, requesting that the company automatically filter links to a 2008 British newspaper report that included photos and a video of Mosley participating in a Nazi-themed sex party.

Mosley argued that French law prohibits the taking or distribution of images of an individual in a private space without his or her consent. But Google argued that that reasoning limits free speech.

As part of this week's settlement, the tech giant must filter nine images of Mosley from its worldwide search results, and pay him 1 in compensation. Beginning in 2014, the company will also be fined 1,000 every time a salacious photo of Mosley is found in its search engine.

Google did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment, but told the New York Times that it plans to appeal the decision.

"The law does not support Mr. Mosley's demand for the construction of an unprecedented new Internet censorship tool," Google Associate General Counsel Daphne Keller said in a September statement. She pointed to repeated European court rulings that found filters to be "blunt instruments that jeopardize lawful expression and undermine users' fundamental right to access information."

A filter may not even solve Mosley's problem, Keller added, explaining that pages removed from search results remain live on the Web, accessible to users by other means, like following links on social networks or navigating to a specific address in a browser.

"It's a fair decision," Clara Zerbib, a Parisian lawyer who represented Mosley, told the Times. "This case isn't about censoring information, but about complying with French law."

There is no word on just how much of a trickle-down effect this week's French court ruling will have on the tech giant, but Keller argued in September that it will leave a mark.

"This is not just a case about Google, but the entire Internet industry," she said. "Any start-up could face the same daunting and expensive obligation to build new censorship tools  despite the harm to users' fundamental rights and the ineffectiveness of such measures."

In 2008, Mosley was awarded £60,000 ($96,000) in a successful suit against England's now-defunct News of the World, which published the photos.

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