Software giant Google on Friday filed a lawsuit against Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood accusing him of federal law violations in a campaign launched against the company.
The tech company has filed the case in Mississippi district court, seeking to halt a 79-page subpoena by the office of Hood.
In its lawsuit, Google said the Attorney General was attempting to hold it accountable for several information available online, including search results, though he specifically asked the company about advertisers that have tried promoting the illegal drugs sale on its sites.
According to Google, Hood has violated its rights under the First and Fourth Amendments with his act.
The lawsuit reads, “The Attorney General’s effort to force Google to severely limit third-party information accessible through Google’s services violates federal law in several ways.”
Responding to the lawsuit, Hood said in a released statement, “I will reach out to legal counsel Google’s board of directors to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the issues affecting consumers that we attorneys general have pointed out in a series of eight letters to Google.”
The case was filed a day after Kent Walker, Google’s General Counsel, wrote in a blog post that Hollywood is attempting to “censor the Internet”. The blog post by Google was also partially in response to a story published by ‘The Verge’ that detailed a reported effort led by the MPAA to block websites that are alleged of publishing copyrighted material.
The film industry is a major supporter of two passionately debated bills, called the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), both intended to target those websites that are illegally displaying copyrighted content.
