Ask No Questions: Google De-index Unity’s Questions for J Mark Brewer

Phil Groom writes:

From Unity’s latest Liberal Conspiracy column, Libel, Google and a cause worth supporting:

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with Google’s Webmaster Tools and came across a rather curious stream of messages from Google, which appear to have started last November:

For legal reasons, we’ve excluded from our search results content located at or under the following URL/directory:

• http://ministryoftruth.me.uk/2008/07/28/questions-for-j-mark-brewer/

Removed from:

• *.google.uk

Cause: We were requested to remove this URL from our search results in order to comply with local law.

The message also provides a link to a web page at the Chilling Effects Clearing House to which Google sends any cease and desist notices and other legal threats it receives, as a matter of policy, although five months on from this complaint, the only additional information this page provides is this:

Notice Unavailable

British Defamation Complaint to Google

The cease-and-desist or legal threat you requested is not yet available.

Chilling Effects will post the notice after we process it.

Google has received a legal complaint and submitted it here to the Chilling Effects database, as described in Google’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act policy. In response to the complaint, Google may have removed content from a search results page or hosted page.

The back story here starts with a cease and desist notice sent by J Mark Brewer, a Texan lawyer, to a British blogger and cartoonist, Dave Walker…

Head on over to Liberal Conspiracy to read Unity’s full report, and over to Unity’s original page to revisit the questions Google don’t want us to ask…

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