Google making money from child pornography, alleges lawsuit

Google making money from child pornography, alleges lawsuit

Jeffrey Toback, a legislator from Nassau County Legislature of New York, has brought about legal action against Google Inc for allegedly displaying paid links to sites that sell pornographic content involving minors through its search engine.

The complaint, which runs into 16 pages, accuses Google of being 'the largest and most efficient facilitator and distributor of child pornography in the world'. “When it comes to the protection and well-being of our nation's innocent children, (Google Inc) refuses to spend a dime's worth of resources to block child pornography from reaching children or to filter out search terms such as 'child pornography' or 'kiddie porn' or the content to which such terms lead,” Toback's complaint said. It added that though Google was willing to block the word 'democracy' in its Chinese searches, it wasn't ready to spend money to protect children. Surprisingly, Yahoo and MSN have neither been included in the lawsuit nor are likely to be.

Google, however, defended its search engine and said that it did not make money from child pornography and reported sites that did so to the authorities whenever it came across them. “Child pornography is illegal, and Google prohibits it in our products. When we find or are made aware of any child pornography, we remove it from our products, including our search engine. We also report it to the appropriate law enforcement officials and fully cooperate with the law enforcement community to combat child pornography,” said Steve Langdon, a spokesman for Google.

A Google search for the string 'child pornography' displayed links to Web sites about prevention of child pornography, law enforcement agencies fighting the menace and laws related to the issue. Langdon added that Google removed links to sites displaying such content immediately and alerted law enforcement about them. He added that Google has strict policies that are against 'promotion of child pornography or other non-consensual material'. Langdon also pointed out to the SafeSearch tool that filters out offensive material from the results of a search.

But Toback said that he is not looking at monetary damages from Google but wants the company to stop 'advertising relating to Web sites that display, market or otherwise provide illegal access to pornography'. “What goes on in the house is the parents' responsibility. (But Google has) a responsibility to make sure that these sites are not so easily accessible,” he said.