users that 'for legal reasons, we're obliged to temporarily remove results related to this search'.

Although the court orders are temporary, pending a final ruling, the message is worrying. Holding a search engine legally responsible for the content of its results makes the very business of search, the lifeblood of the internet, impossible. And, on a purely practical level, Yahoo!'s giant take-down won't affect only one Diego Maradona, but every other Diego Maradona, too.

Argentina looks set to lose its claim to a free and unbiased internet

Perhaps more importantly, there's a specific concern regarding some of Pena's non-celebrity clients, such as high-profile judge Maria Servini de Cubria, a public official now involved in the business of filtering what the Argentinian public can and can't read about her. If state intervention into the web is allowed to become the norm, Argentina must lose its claim to a free and unbiased internet.

While Argentinian Yahoo! users who want to read about their football hero are said to be circumnavigating the ban by using other Spanish language versions of the site, activists from the OpenNet Initiative, ­ a global organisation monitoring web censorship and filtering, ­ are watching the skirmish closely.

Although content filtering is currently on the rise, this is the first case, anywhere, of filtering based on search rather than on results. The fear is that ­ should court interference with internet search be tolerated ­ neither free speech nor the very business of search could survive.