More than two dozen human rights and civil liberty groups have thrown their weight behind Google as the tech giant challenges a Canadian court decision it warns could stifle freedom of expression around the world and lead to a diminished internet of the “lowest common denominator”.



In an appeal heard on Tuesday in the supreme court of Canada, Google Inc took aim at a 2015 court decision that sought to censor search results beyond Canada’s borders.

The case stems from a longstanding dispute over intellectual property rights. In 2012, Canadian company Equustek won a judgment to have a company banned from selling a counterfeit version of Equustek’s product online.

Equustek then turned to Google for help in carrying out the court’s order. The internet giant, who was not party to the initial legal action, voluntarily removed more than 300 URLs listed on Google Canada. But as more sites popped up, Equustek went back to court – this time seeking a worldwide ban on the infringing company.

A court of appeal in British Columbia sided with Equustek in 2015, ordering Google to remove all of its search results linked to the company. It is this ruling that Google is now appealing.

The case is being watched closely by human rights and civil liberty groups across North America. Much of the attention, said Gregg Leslie of the Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, focuses on the question at the heart of the precedent-setting case: if one country can control what you see on the internet, what is to prevent other countries from doing the same?

“It’s a worrisome trend, where we see individual countries trying to regulate the internet worldwide,” said Leslie. “And of course the consequences of that would mean that even countries like Russia and China could do the same thing and that will really affect the content available on the internet.”

Some 15 media organisations, ranging from the Associated Press and the Newspaper Association of America, have submitted briefs to the court backing Google’s position, driven by concerns that any precedent established could be used to target content providers as well.

“In this case it might be Google,” said Leslie. “In the next case it might be trying to tell an American news publication what they can and can’t put up on their site for anyone in the world.”



Equustek, the company whose intellectual dispute triggered the case, has argued in court that the issue of freedom of expression is extraneous to the case. Their focus on protecting intellectual property rights has been backed in court by a coalition of Canadian publishers, authors, composers and film-makers, as well as an international federation of film producers.

Aaron Brindle, the head of public affairs for Google Canada, said in an email that the tech giant’s filing to Canada’s supreme court “is grounded in a core principle of international law: that one country should not have the right to impose its rules on others”.

In its appeal the company argued that the court order runs contrary to the freedom of expression, fails to balance private interests against that of the public and could “lead to a significantly diminished internet of the lowest common denominator”, said Brindle.

Human Rights Watch also submitted a brief to Canada’s supreme court, urging it to adopt a wider lens in considering the case. “We think that the Canadian court has to look at this outside simply the context of Canada,” said Dinah PoKempner of the organisation. “They have to say, ‘Is a global injunction actually necessary, and is it a proportionate measure given the likely global effects and difficulty this precedent could set?’”



A court order to remove worldwide search results could threaten free expression if it catches on globally – where it would then be subject to wildly divergent standards on freedom of speech.

“Cases that are contested under differing hate speech standards, cases that are called glorification of terrorism in one country but provocative free speech in another,” could all be suppressed, said PoKempner, as could dissent to supposedly defamatory content.

The result, she said, could be a “global chilling effect”, where content providers and platforms would be constrained by the cost and risk of contesting global injunctions. “A lot of art, literature, dissent, unconventional thinking depends on it being able to be published outside the jurisdiction where someone seeks to suppress it,” she said. “You might wind up with an internet that simply features everything that is uncontroversial.”