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Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

abc.net.au

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Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#41

Post by acdha »

kriro wrote: post #31

If I'm Google I'd just stop indexing this site after the ruling and also talk to my competitors and suggest they do the same because it's bad for them. Seems like they index it but downweight already. Pretty interesting ruling that a search engine is basically liable for autocomplete (and thus the content they index). The original website seems pretty shady and not being indexed should basically destroy their busines…

> If I'm Google I'd just stop indexing this site after the ruling and also talk to my competitors and suggest they do the same because it's bad for them. Seems like they index it but downweight already.

That’s what they refused to do after losing the previous case on appeal. That means they no longer have any way to claim they didn’t know about it, since they spent large sums of money fighting it in court.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#42

Post by ballballball »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #35
numbsafari wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it can’t scale, doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong. There is no right to a scalable business model. If you can’t figure out how to do your business without doing it right, you shouldn’t be doing it. Our local coal fired power plant has been yelling for decades that they can’t possibly make a profit and meet all the environmental obligations. Well… guess what.

That would also imply that there is no right for individuals to have a productive life with plenty of free time per day. Since burdensome, long-lasting, legally required procedures can also be imposed by a court on an individual. Seems like a slippery slope to be honest.

Ahhh... The old "corporations are people" equivocation.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#43

Post by DannyBee »

numbsafari wrote: post #26
herodotus wrote: post #22

>"In dismissing the innocent dissemination defense, which required that the publisher be a subordinate distributor who did not know or ought not to have known that the matter was defamatory, the Court stated that the defamatory nature of the content was self-evident from an examination of it." (extracted from https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/duffy-v... ) I am no fan of Google, but this seems bizar…

Just because it can’t scale, doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong. There is no right to a scalable business model. If you can’t figure out how to do your business without doing it right, you shouldn’t be doing it. Our local coal fired power plant has been yelling for decades that they can’t possibly make a profit and meet all the environmental obligations. Well… guess what.

This is a fun quip, but are you literally suggesting that someone should have to read every webpage indexed by a search engine?

That is what the comment you are responding to suggests doesn't scale.

If so, that seems, way off the deep end to me, and you know, slightly different from your local coal plant killing everyone through pollution.

If not, what precisely is your okay (If non-scalable) solution to the problem presented here?

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#44

Post by tgv »

kriro wrote: post #31

If I'm Google I'd just stop indexing this site after the ruling and also talk to my competitors and suggest they do the same because it's bad for them. Seems like they index it but downweight already. Pretty interesting ruling that a search engine is basically liable for autocomplete (and thus the content they index). The original website seems pretty shady and not being indexed should basically destroy their busines…

The auto-complete is of Google's own making. They built and added it, they can improve or remove it. There's no reason to assume an automated prompt has to repeat defamatory or deceitful statements just because they appear somewhere online.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#45

Post by omnimus »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #35
numbsafari wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it can’t scale, doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong. There is no right to a scalable business model. If you can’t figure out how to do your business without doing it right, you shouldn’t be doing it. Our local coal fired power plant has been yelling for decades that they can’t possibly make a profit and meet all the environmental obligations. Well… guess what.

That would also imply that there is no right for individuals to have a productive life with plenty of free time per day. Since burdensome, long-lasting, legally required procedures can also be imposed by a court on an individual. Seems like a slippery slope to be honest.

No? Because corporations/companies are not individuals? (no matter how they sometimes try to be)

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#46

Post by varjag »

logicalmonster wrote: post #17

> Dr Janice Duffy successfully argued in 2015 and 2023 that Google published defamatory extracts from American website RipOff Report on its search engine page, despite her notifying the company and asking for the posts to be removed. Personally, I don't easily see how Google could be liable for defamation here under any reasonable standard. Their search services generally don't say the equivalent of "Bob murdered a w…

The problem begins when you are Bob and anyone typing your name in the search engine gets "Bob murdered a woman in 1989", without any reference to particular Joe.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#47

Post by bluGill »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #35
numbsafari wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it can’t scale, doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong. There is no right to a scalable business model. If you can’t figure out how to do your business without doing it right, you shouldn’t be doing it. Our local coal fired power plant has been yelling for decades that they can’t possibly make a profit and meet all the environmental obligations. Well… guess what.

That would also imply that there is no right for individuals to have a productive life with plenty of free time per day. Since burdensome, long-lasting, legally required procedures can also be imposed by a court on an individual. Seems like a slippery slope to be honest.

There is no right to that. Things that make it impossible should be looked on with suspicion, but the right does not exist.

If you were willing to live like 1930 you could have plenty of free time, but 1930 means electric was a luxury most people didn't have.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#48

Post by viraptor »

logicalmonster wrote: post #17

> Dr Janice Duffy successfully argued in 2015 and 2023 that Google published defamatory extracts from American website RipOff Report on its search engine page, despite her notifying the company and asking for the posts to be removed. Personally, I don't easily see how Google could be liable for defamation here under any reasonable standard. Their search services generally don't say the equivalent of "Bob murdered a w…

> Google's service remains entirely factual when they pass along the word that "Joe says that ...

That's not what they do though. This is a case about autocomplete in the search bar which gave the phrase "psychic stalker" after her name without any context or source. You could expect people to know this is just a random phrase from the index, but: 1. People don't understand how Google works. 2. It doesn't change the result of the negative association for a name used in business.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#49

Post by kikokikokiko »

csunbird wrote: post #23
testplzignore wrote: post #3

https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/duffy-v... has some actual details of what this is about.

> Dr. Duffy posted a web report on the website “Ripoff Report” complaining about her dissatisfaction with the services she had received from the psychics on the Kasamba site. She also commented on the reports of others about the psychics. She created a chat group “kasambavictims” on Yahoo. Dr. Duffy also posted messages under a pseudonym, and began to email the site complaining that her friend’s wife had committed su…

I find it amusing that I feel no empathy at all to ANYONE involved in this case. The "psychics" are just low-life scammers that prey on the stupid/mentally ill, and things like this case are bound to happen to them from time to time. Google is Google, everything that makes the evil tech lords suffer a little bit is a plus for mankind. And this woman seems to be just an insufferable crazy cat lady, so good riddance to all involved. It's a win-win-win for humanity.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#50

Post by postingawayonhn »

glimshe wrote: post #33
herodotus wrote: post #22

>"In dismissing the innocent dissemination defense, which required that the publisher be a subordinate distributor who did not know or ought not to have known that the matter was defamatory, the Court stated that the defamatory nature of the content was self-evident from an examination of it." (extracted from https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/duffy-v... ) I am no fan of Google, but this seems bizar…

Irrespective of this specific ruling, the laws don't need to make Google's business scale or even be viable. Google should only exist if its business can comply with the rules we created for our society.

But if Google adds a lot of value to our society should we not consider amending our laws to make the business viable?
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