Google take down requests

ZDnet ran a story today following the release by Google of statistics on take down requests. The author posed the question that 17 requests for 9 successes was a poor strike rate.

Elsewhere a blogger wondered which blog had been subject to a request. The article seemed to have the flavour that blogs must be innocent and any attempt to get one taken down must be motivated by some deep political goal.

Then along comes a comment on that post that read;

My household has two blogs currently subject to court orders, and thus shut down, of the half dozen we currently own.
Apparently, criticism of thieving landlords, incompetent government and police officials is enough to get a court order to shut down websites.
We're currently fighting to have such court orders overturned.
By our estimation, 2% of the Google "data requests" relate to our case, and at least 2 of the takedowns.

Interesting for all to note that the judicial system does in fact work that way, there is no unrestrained right to free speech and if you want one go campaign for a bill of rights not just assume you have the right because some IT geek told you the internet was free!

PS This blog is, as a matter of interest, hosted on blogger which is a Google site.