“They and other internet intermediaries are worried about what this could mean down the line,” Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, said on Friday.

“Not only does Google have to monitor all its systems, it has to prevent people uploading new copies of the video, possibly requiring snooping. It’s unprecedented.”

Google has been denied two emergency stay motions against the decision by a divided three-judge panel. It vowed to continue resisting. “We strongly disagree with this ruling and will fight it,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

People who search for the video find a black screen with a short message from Google repeating its pledge to fight the decision. If the company fails to persuade the same judges to reverse their ruling its last resort will be the supreme court, which may choose not to hear the case.

“Hopefully the ruling will be treated as an outlier never to be repeated but the law doesn’t always work that way,” said McSherry.