The lawsuit was filed against the search engine company after
letters demanding removal of the links went unanswered.
Accordingly, the rail operator brought a court action to force the
US-based company to remove the offending links and to delete its
cached copies of the articles, a feature which allows Google users
to view web pages even after they no longer exist on the original
host site.
The offending articles were by Radikal, an extremist publication
which has been banned in Germany. Entitled, “A handbook for
destruction of railroad transport of all kinds,” they were written
by groups protesting against the transport of radioactive
materials.
Access to the articles has already been blocked following
Deutsche Bahn AG’s success in obtaining a court order in Amsterdam
against Dutch ISP XS4All earlier this week.
A lawyer for Deutsche Bahn AG explained that, even though the
articles are no longer on-line, “we want the search engines to
remove the link, because it still advertises a handbook for
destruction. People will start looking for it elsewhere, and we
don’t want that.”
Google said it is now complying with the demands of Deutsche
Bahn AG. However, Deutsche Bahn AG warned that it still plans to
sue AltaVista and Yahoo! if they do not remove links to the same
material from their sites within two days.
It is likely that Deutsche Bahn AG sued Google in Germany,
rather than the US, because the country’s laws do not share the
free speech principles contained in the First Amendment of the US
Constitution. Google maintains a small office in Germany, with only
three staff. Yahoo! and AltaVista also maintain German offices.
