A Berlin court has ruled on 22 February 2005 that a meta search engine has exactly the same legal responsibilities as a regular search engine to prevent users from accessing illegal content. A meta search engine doesn't have any databases of itself that could contain possibly illegal content, but should be able to filter the results from other search engines anyhow, according to the Berlin ruling.

The case results from a complaint by a female television host, who tried to prevent the search engine from producing links to possible nude pictures of her. In fact, the links refer to erotic sites that falsely use the names of many media-personalities in combination with the word 'naked'. The search engine declined it was possible to prevent these results from appearing.

The ruling didn't enter into effect immediately. The operator of the meta search engine has appealed and must prove he's unable to block specific results from other search engines and prove it is technically impossible to create adequate blocking.

Summary and full verdict Landgericht Berlin (22.02.2005)
http://www.aufrecht.de/3867.html

Meta search engine
http://www.apollo7.de