Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#81

Post by true_religion » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 1:04 PM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #52

ballballball wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We had a post about that a few months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36732729

In the US, corporations have the same rights as people because they are collectively made up from people.

In the EU, corporations have fewer rights than the individuals that collectively make them up.

In other countries, different rules apply de jure or de facto.

People’s main complaint about corporations is that no one personally gets hit with a civil charge and civil charges never seem to change the behavior of corporations.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#82

Post by edgyquant » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

code51 wrote: post #67

unsupp0rted wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much "be careful with your UI" as "when you're actually notified that your UI is treading on somebody, you better stop (treading on that particular person)".

But how can you notify Google of anything? Even when you report an important bug, bots and "product experts" just shrug it off. The only "notification" for Google is a lawsuit it seems.

Just shrugging it off implies you’ve notified them. Then not caring is why they lost this lawsuit.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#83

Post by lesuorac » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 1:11 PM UTC

code51 wrote: post #67

unsupp0rted wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much "be careful with your UI" as "when you're actually notified that your UI is treading on somebody, you better stop (treading on that particular person)".

But how can you notify Google of anything? Even when you report an important bug, bots and "product experts" just shrug it off. The only "notification" for Google is a lawsuit it seems.

> Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

> But how can you notify Google of anything?

Clearly with a lawsuit. Per the other article in this thread [1], Google did nothing when she notified them but de-indexed the webpage following her initial lawsuit.

[1]: https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/duffy-v...

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#84

Post by arp242 » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 1:14 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #43

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.

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…

If I put something defamatory on my website I can get sued.

Why should it be different for Google?

"We cannot have someone response to every complaint!" – okay, I understand. Then maybe don't do whatever you're doing at all then if you can't handle the responsibility?

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#85

Post by lesuorac » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 1:14 PM UTC

cool_dude85 wrote: post #65

Y-bar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google appears to be still allowed to surface content which is defamatory, but they still have a publisher's duty to remove it once notified, I think this is key from the summary (linked elsewhere in the discussion): > […] because [Google] was on notice that the material was defamatory and refused to remove the information, it could not be found to have innocently circulated the information

It seems like under Australian law there's a concept of a "secondary publisher" of defamatory content, which would typically be a bookstore or library. So, the actual publisher, author, etc. can be held liable for defamation, but also, if the bookstore has been notified that it is selling a defamatory book and does not take it off the shelf, it too can be held liable. In this case, the woman notified Google that thei…

Well a bit more than that.

The second lawsuit was about the auto-complete where ever time you searched her name it'd suggest appending "psychic stalker" to it. So it'd be more akin to every time you ordered coffee from startbucks they wrote down "Dude, Physic Stalker" on your cup every time.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#86

Post by arp242 » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 1:24 PM UTC

glimshe wrote: post #53

postingawayonhn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How would that work? Business becomes big by breaking the laws then we change the laws so business stays big?

That's quite literally Uber's business model for large parts of the world.

It's rather sad that these kind of "businesses" aren't just banned and prosecuted as criminal conspiracies. I really think that's the appropriate classification for an organisation that goes in to a country, sets up a business it knows is illegal, stokes up violence, and reaps in profit (well, "profit", because it still doesn't actually make a profit).

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#87

Post by carlosjobim » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 1:25 PM UTC

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…

> Am I missing something important here? Dr. Duffy clearly defamed a business with a lie...

What you're missing is that you can't defame a business. Only if that business is very strongly connected to a single person.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#88

Post by jsnell » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 1:27 PM UTC

code51 wrote: post #67

unsupp0rted wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much "be careful with your UI" as "when you're actually notified that your UI is treading on somebody, you better stop (treading on that particular person)".

But how can you notify Google of anything? Even when you report an important bug, bots and "product experts" just shrug it off. The only "notification" for Google is a lawsuit it seems.

That's just a lazy meme take, there's obviously a documented process to request removal of content from their products, including Search.

https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?sjid...

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#89

Post by postingawayonhn » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC

glimshe wrote: post #53

postingawayonhn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How would that work? Business becomes big by breaking the laws then we change the laws so business stays big?

It's not exclusive to big business.

Often laws are drafted without considering business models that have yet to be thought of. When those businesses start operating it's common for laws to be changed to ensure they are properly regulated.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#90

Post by jeroenhd » Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 1:32 PM UTC

code51 wrote: post #67

unsupp0rted wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much "be careful with your UI" as "when you're actually notified that your UI is treading on somebody, you better stop (treading on that particular person)".

But how can you notify Google of anything? Even when you report an important bug, bots and "product experts" just shrug it off. The only "notification" for Google is a lawsuit it seems.

You can't notify Google of anything, that's probably why Google needed to settle in the first place. It's their choice that they don't do any customer support.