A recent lawsuit against the major search engines by a Christopher Langdon was defeated in court yesterday, according to Eric Goldman's blog.
In Langdon v. Google, Langdon sued Google, MSN, and Yahoo because they refused to carry ads. Google allegedly rejected his ads because they attacked people, MSN allegedly ignored his ad request, and Yahoo allegedly said it would only take ads from sites it hosts.
The judge cited the following reasons for the decision:
- Search engines have a First Amendment right to reject ads as part of their protected right to speak or not.
- Search engine decisions to reject ads in an effort to filter "otherwise objectionable" content.
- A lawsuit filed in Delaware state court, search engines aren't state actors and are not bound by the First Amendment.
