Google Sued for Allegedly Profiting from Kiddy Porn

On Thursday, search giant Google was sued by a Long Island, N.Y., politico for allegedly profiting from illegal child pornography, the Associated Press reports via MSNBC.com.

Jeffrey Toback, a representative of the Nassau County Legislature, accused Google of having paid links on its site to Web locales that feature pornographic content involving children, according to the AP.

The complaint, filed in the Mineola, N.Y., state Supreme Court, reads, “This case is about a multi-billion dollar company that promotes and profits from child pornography,” according to the AP.

Google denied the charges, and noted that it takes a number of measures to prevent such inappropriate material from being accessed via its webpages, the AP reports. The company’s SafeSearch function works specifically to filter out adult content, according to the AP.

“When we find or are made aware of any child pornography, we remove it from our products, including our search engine,” Google spokesman Steve Landon told the AP. “We also report it to the appropriate law-enforcement officials and fully cooperate with the law-enforcement community to combat child pornography.”

No additional search companies are named as defendants in the complaint, which labels Google “the largest and most efficient facilitator and distributor of child pornography in the world,” the AP reports.

Toback is not seeking monetary damages from Mountain View, Calif.-based Google; rather, he wants to prohibit the company from displaying advertisements on its site that link back to properties featuring, or in association with, illegal pornography of any sort, according to the AP.

For related news coverage, read Google Steers Clear of Silicon Valley Wi-Fi.

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