Court Doesn't Buy Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood's Argument: Puts His Google Demands On Hold (original) (raw)

from the nice-try,-jim dept

Back in December, we noted that Google had gone to court to try to stop a ridiculously broad subpoena issued by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood. For quite some time now, Hood has been publicly attacking Google, based on what appears to be near total ignorance of both the law and technology. Oh, and maybe it also has something to do with the MPAA directly funding his investigation and authoring the letters that Hood sent.

Either way, Google pointed out that the broad subpoena that Hood issued to Google clearly violated Section 230 of the CDA in looking to hold Google accountable for other’s actions and speech. It pointed out other problems with the order as well — and while Hood insisted that his subpoena was perfectly reasonable, it appears that a federal court isn’t so sure. Today the court told Hood that he’s granting a temporary injunction on the subpoena, noting that Google’s argument is “stronger.”

This certainly is nowhere close to over, but it does highlight that Hood’s repeated arguments that he has every right to hold Google accountable for the fact that sometimes people use the search engine to find illegal stuff, isn’t particularly convincing to at least one federal judge.

Filed Under: attorney general, jim hood, mississippi, section 230, subpoena
Companies: google