General

Goodbye, Google?

BC court case could stop Canadians from searching the web

Imagine a world without Google, Yahoo! or any other way to find the phone number for that new pizza place on the corner. Terrified yet? You should be, according to the Ottawa Citizen, which reports that a case currently before the BC Supreme Court involving the Canadian Recording Industry Association’s legal threats against tiny BC-based bit-torrent search engine ISOhunt has the potential to plunge Canadian internet users into an information blackout. If the court accepts CIRA’s argument that the search engine should be held liable for any unauthorized download of pirated material by its users, it could apply the same logic to any other search engine that could be used for the same purpose, according the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, which calls this “the most important copyright litigation” currently underway in this country. If that’s the case, the BC ruling could leave even the most law-abiding web user in the dark. 

Ottawa Citizen

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