Mosley v SARL Google was a 2013 French court case in which Max Mosley, former president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), attempted to make the internet search engine Google remove images of him engaging in a sadomasochistic sex act with several prostitutes. The images had already been published by the now-defunct British newspaper News of the World.
Link to the English Privacy Win
Publication of those images was litigated in Mosley v News Group Newspapers, which awarded Mosley £60,000 in damages after the High Court rejected the paper’s privacy invasion and its false “Nazi-themed” framing of a private SM session. Damages in London did not clear the open web. Mosley therefore sued Google in France to force search-result removal of the same SM imagery.
Place in the Mosley Privacy Arc
The French Google action belongs with the English High Court win and the later Mosley v United Kingdom Strasbourg case on pre-publication notice. Together they show how European law can treat consensual sadomasochistic activity as private life while still leaving victims fighting indexing, mirrors, and cross-border republication long after a tabloid has lost in court.
