In an ironic twist, China’s largest search engine, Baidu, has successfully argued that it was entitled to First Amendment protection in regard to its search engine results in the United States, which excluded statements by the plaintiffs, a group of New York residents who “advocated” for “the Democracy movement in China.” In a question of first impression in the Second Circuit,1 the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled that the First Amendment protects as speech the results produced by an Internet search engine. Accordingly, the court, in a decision by U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman, dismissed the lawsuit brought by the plaintiffs alleging, inter alia, that Baidu.com had violated the plaintiffs’ civil rights under the U.S. and New York Constitutions.
The court’s decision, in Zhang v. Baidu.com2 is particularly noteworthy in that the First Amendment right it protected was Baidu’s right to censure the free political speech of others. In essence, the court decided that Baidu had the right to publish or not in its search engine, and its right not to speak trumped any obligation on its part to give voice to all speakers.
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