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The Supreme Court of Justice overturned a judgment of the Civil Court of Appeals, which ordered Google to remove a search suggestion that involved the General Secretary of a public university and to refrain from recommending it, since the content affected the plaintiff’s honor. Also, the lower court ordered to cease the dissemination of certain URLs when a search is made with the plaintiff’s first and last name, as well as to delete the content stored as a caché version of those URLs, all within ten days, under the warning of applying a financial penalty. In turn, the Supreme Court declared that “it is necessary to remember that freedom of expression has a preeminent place within the framework of our constitutional freedoms". It also pointed out that the lower court ruling “implies an act of censorship” because “it...

The Supreme Court ratified its holding in “Rodríguez”: intermediaries are liable if they fail to act after acquiring actual knowledge about the unlawful nature of specific third-party infringing content. Moreover, the Court reiterated that thumbnails are merely filtered links that should not be treated differently from text search results. Further, search engines do not “capture”, “reproduce” or “commercialize” images under articles 31 of the Law 11.723 and 53 of the Civil and Commercial Code. Even if they did, in an extended opinion, Dr. Rosenkratz added that manifest consent to the storage of one’s image in a website implies consent to the indexation and linking of such website and its content by search engines.

The lower court had entered an injunction ordering Google and Yahoo to remove all links and images related to plaintiff, a model who appeared in some photographs that initially surfaced on social media where she appeared next to a federal prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, whose highly publicized death was under criminal investigation. The Court acknowledged an overriding public interest in the information and the images at issue. The fundamental rights to freedom of expression and access to information, under these circumstances, outweighed the right to privacy and publicity. Moreover, the Court recognized that some of the URLs identified by the plaintiff belonged to journalistic media. Then, according to the decision, the plaintiff should have sued those sufficiently identified media outlets instead of the defendant search...

The president of the Make a Wish Foundation in Argentina sought a preliminary injunction against Google for the removal of a defamatory blog post and other websites that republished it. The Court affirmed the judgment denying the injunction. According to the decision, the allegedly defamatory content was a matter of public concern because it pertained to the foundation’s fundraising activities and management of donations, and plaintiff had failed to prove falsity as part of her prima facie case. The Court held that it would be unreasonable to enter a preliminary injunction against Google, requiring deindexing of the blog, when the owner of the blog could have contested plaintiff’s allegations had he been named defendant to the lawsuit.

This case is one among numerous civil lawsuits brought against the search engines Google and Yahoo! by different ‘celebrities’ and well‐known public figures for violation of their honor and privacy. The Court held that preliminary injunctions are capable of determining whether certain content is ‘prima facie’ unlawful when they identify specific infringing content, as opposed to being issued in general terms (see “Albertario”). Accordingly, intermediaries are deemed to have actual knowledge of the infringing content specified in the preliminary injunction upon notice.

This case is one among numerous civil lawsuits brought against the search engines Google and Yahoo! by different ‘celebrities’ and well‐known public figures for violation of their honor and privacy. Similar to “Giovanetti”, the Court stated that a generic preliminary injunction ordering the removal of allegedly infringing content is not sufficient to make a search engine liable. However, in this case, the Court observed that although the lower judge’s order was too broad, the plaintiff had presented documentary evidence that contained a list specifying the infringing websites in issue. Thus, the Court concluded, Google had actual knowledge of the unlawful content and was liable for its failure to promptly remove it.