> I don't think it is cowardly for Google to obey the law and court orders.
I do. I would never comply with any government request unless it was preceded by a court order. And if a court order had been obtained, I would use common sense to determine if the request should be granted. Anything less IS cowardly.
If you don't stand up to abuse, the abuse will simply continue.
While I realize that there are defensible reasons to actively reject some government directives the benefits of a lawful society should not be underestimated. Bad laws should be fixed via legislative action. Sometimes this means complying with the bad law in the interim.
Selective enforcement and/or selective non-compliance may be justifiable as a tactical response but if taken too far then we no longer have the rule of law.
The other clear distinction to make here is that it isn't exactly Google's fight since the content that is being targeted is merely being indexed by Google not created by Google. So logically it is the content owners/creator (website owners) who should be standing up to this kind of action. Unfortunately such fights are often extremely lopsided (small publisher vs. huge corporation), so people expect Google to step in to help because it is tangentially involved, but most of the time it is simply not practical.
Its absolutely Google's fight. Google does nothing but publish links. Linking is absolutely protected speech. Google's entire business is being threatened by a judge ignorant of the law.
I do. I would never comply with any government request unless it was preceded by a court order. And if a court order had been obtained, I would use common sense to determine if the request should be granted. Anything less IS cowardly.
If you don't stand up to abuse, the abuse will simply continue.