First Amendment Protection For Search Results?

An anonymous reader writes "A legal paper (PDF), commissioned by Google and written by Eugene Volokh and Donald Falk, makes the case that search results should be protected under the First Amendment, thereby making regulation of search results illegal. The authors say a search engine 'uses sophisticated computerized algorithms, but those algorithms themselves inherently incorporate the search engine company engineers' judgments about what material users are likely to find responsive to these queries.' Cory Doctorow's reaction: 'I think that the editorial right to exercise judgment is much more widely understood than the sacred infallibility of robotic sorting. I certainly support it more. But I wonder if Google appreciates that it will now have to confront people who are angry about their search rankings by saying, "I'm sorry, we just don't like you very much" instead of "I'm sorry, our equations put you where you belong." And oy, the libel headaches they're going to face.'"

Comments

Re:Google: "Corporation is a person"?

[icebike]

The notion that an elected set of representatives would create a baseline secret test to check google's results is an excellent and needed one. a light weight check process could be easily designed and periodically launched to *measure* the results.

Really?
Gadaffi was elected, as was Mubarak, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Kim Jong-il, ...

If you don't like Google search results go use Bing or Baidu.

In the mean time, I prefer results that are algorithmically determined based on the words I enter rather than some politicians idea of what I should be searching for.

Re:Google: "Corporation is a person"?

[Baloroth]

So... where, oh shill-who-just-made-an-account-to-post-this-the-second-the-story-came-up (hi bonch!), does Google say they are entitled to 1st amendment protections because they are a person? Hint: they don't, because the 1st amendment doesn't just apply to people, it applies to, well, everything, including corporations. It has nothing whatsoever to do with corporations being "people." Please, there is enough to bash Google on without having to drag in completely irrelevant stuff.

And if that person was "blocked" from publishing, clearly he made an agreement with Google that required their permission to publish: otherwise, they wouldn't be able to block it. Clearly, he shouldn't have, and I don't know why you would.

Re:Google: "Corporation is a person"?

[readin]

Google is only a corporation because the government GAVE them a license to incorporate. With any license comes restrictions on what can or can not be done"

While I disagree with the "corporation is a person" argument, I do recognize that a corporation is an assembly of persons who should not be stripped of their consitutional rights simply because they get organized. In fact the US Constitution explicitly guarantees the right to assemble to petition the government.