[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit [official website] on Friday overturned [PDF] a district court decision that allowed Google to ignore a subpoena. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood [official website] began investigating Google in 2012 for failing to do enough to prevent crime. He issued a 79-page subpoena, but Google refused to produce the requested information, instead filing a lawsuit. The appeals judges said their ruling did not determine whether the subpoena was reasonable, nor whether Google was immune from suit under the federal Communications Decency Act[text]. The judges said that Hood would have to take Google to state court to force it to comply and that Google could then challenge the subpoena.

Legal proceedings concerning the relationship between Internet service providers (ISPs) and alleged copyright infringers have taken place worldwide. In April the Federal Court of Australia ordered [text] six ISPs to hand over [JURIST report] information about alleged illegal downloaders of the US film Dallas Buyer’s Club. In April 2014 the Senate of Brazil passed a bill [JURIST report] that puts limits on the metadata that can be collected from Internet users in the country. The law also requires ISPs to remove offensive materials following court orders and removes liability of ISPs for content published by their users. The Hague Court of Appeals in January 2014 overturned [JURIST report] a 2011 order of the District court that required two major Dutch ISPs to block customers from a list of addresses linked to The Pirate Bay. The court found [Guardian report] that the ban had been nearly impossible to enforce and that the ones against whom the ban was being enforced, the ISPs, were not themselves violating any copyrights. In June 2014 the High Court in Dublin, Ireland, ordered [JURIST report] several ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay and its proxy servers within 30 days; the plaintiffs included EMI, Sony, Warner Music and Universal.