Activists to appeal U.S. ruling on Baidu censorship

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By Michael Kan

March 31, 2014 05:38 AM ET

IDG News Service - A group of activists are hoping to appeal a U.S. judge's ruling that treated the censorship on Chinese search engine Baidu as free speech.

In making the ruling, District Judge Jesse Furman equated the censorship to a newspaper exercising its editorial right to publish what it wants. But Stephen Preziosi, lawyer for the eight pro-democracy activists, said in an email Saturday that the comparison was wrong, and that the court had a "fundamental misunderstanding" of how search engines work.

The appeal is planned to be filed later this week, Preziosi wrote.

In 2011, the eight activists filed a lawsuit, claiming that Baidu violates U.S. free speech laws by censoring pro-democracy works on its search engine for users in New York.

But last Thursday, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the lawsuit, and ruled that Baidu had the right to create a search engine that favors certain political speech over another.

Newspapers have to manage costs and spacing on the paper in selecting what they publish, but search engines operate by indexing all content on the Web, Preziosi said. A In Baidu's case, the company worked to "proactively" exclude the pro-democracy works from its search engine, he added.

"This constitutes the denial of the right to freedom of speech," Preziosi said.

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Activists to appeal U.S. ruling on Baidu censorship