Google has filed a lawsuit against Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood for allegedly violating a federal law in a campaign launched against the search giant.
The lawsuit, filed in Mississippi district court, seeks to block a 79-page subpoena by Hood’s office calling out for information about how the search giant hides ads promoting the sale of illegal and prescription drugs on its search engine and through YouTube.
According to the lawsuit, Hood has helped the Motion Picture Association of America to launch an illegal campaign against the search giant, which cracks down on copyright infringement by censoring the Internet.
Google claimed Hood had been attempting to hold it accountable for information like search results, though he specifically asked about advertisers that have tried to promote the sale of illegal drugs on Google’s sites.
As per Google, Hood has violated its rights under the First and Fourth Amendments.
“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,” the lawsuit reads.
In the lawsuit, Google said it is already blocking pharmacies that illegally sell drugs without prescriptions and that it has blocked more than 7.1 million ads that violate its pharmacy policies and blocked or removed more than 200,000 videos for similar violations.
In response, 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.”
Time out? Maybe Hood expects to be his own Federal Parole officer after getting out of a minimum security Federal Prison.