Google Yanks Anti-Church Sites – These sites had anti-Scientology information on them. And the Church of Scientology threatened to sue Google over copyright infringement unless they removed the sites from the search engine. I take for granted that pretty much any site, unless they have code embedded to not be indexed by search engines, will be listed in Google or other search engines. I don’t think it should be up to the search engines to figure out what URLs to exclude, as it will drastically cut down on the free exchange of information that we all know & love. Just another example of abuse of the law. They can’t go after the site directly because it’s in the Netherlands, so instead they are going after the search engine that leads people there.
BUT … now Google has restored some of the the website links to their database after being slammed by free speech advocates for removing the sites in the first place. Good news, but it still troubles me that they were removed at all. [via BoingBoing]
