Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Freedom not to Speak Upheld

We read:

"U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Farnan dismissed a suit filed last May in Delaware by would-be advertiser Christopher Langdon, who claimed G*ogle, Yahoo! and Microsoft infringed upon his rights to free speech by refusing to publish his ads. The ads in question promoted Langdon's Web sites, which criticize some North Carolina politicians and the Chinese government.

"Search engines have a First Amendment right to reject ads as part of their protected right to speak or not," Farnan wrote... the court ruling gives G*ogle free reign to refuse an ad for any reason.... G*ogle is not the public square, it is a media company."

Source