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Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

abc.net.au

171–180 of 220 posts

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#171
post #96
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik a settlement against a company like google is essentially win for a couple reasons -- if Google could win on merit, they can afford to do so; but if they were going to lose, the cost of completing the trial would be even higher than a settlement. Particularly, if she got the redactions and compensation she was looking for, thats certainly a win.

She's quoted as saying it's not about the money, just holding Google accountable. A settlement is money in lieu of accountability. A judgement would deter them from doing it to countless others.

[dead]

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#172
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Posting messages and making up that a friend's wife committed suicide is not really "stalking" or "persistently and obsessively harassing". Immoral and possibly illegal? Perhaps. But that's not the same thing. Also, Duffy was ripped off by Kasamba. I think the crux of the matter is: even if you did something wrong, do things like that really need to be preserved on the internet under your real name for the rest of yo…

even if you did something wrong, do things like that really need to be preserved on the internet under your real name for the rest of your life? Probably not

Why not? It is a historical record of sort, like Nero burning Rome. Does Nero has a right to be forgotten? Also where is the freedom of speech of telling people that Nero burnt Rome?

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#173
post #14

Going after Google rather than the company actually making the remarks seems… incorrect Doesn’t seem like it should be Googles job to fact check the internet. Go after the liar, not the search engine. Google seems no more responsible than your ISP for sending it to you or your monitor manufacturer for displaying it.

Seems the court disagrees with you to the tune of $100000. Seems it is the opinion of the court that Google is rebroadcasting and amplifying slander and refuses to stop when notified and when ordered to do so.

So is every ISP serving Australia.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#174
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting messages and making up that a friend's wife committed suicide is not really "stalking" or "persistently and obsessively harassing". Immoral and possibly illegal? Perhaps. But that's not the same thing. Also, Duffy was ripped off by Kasamba. I think the crux of the matter is: even if you did something wrong, do things like that really need to be preserved on the internet under your real name for the rest of yo…

> Also, Duffy was ripped off by Kasamba. Can you really be ripped off by psychics? It's not like you can sue a church because your prayers haven't been answered, so I'm not sure of religion or spiritualism can be a "rip-off". If someone tells you they'll talk to your dead ancestors for money and you don't believe them, who's to say who's speaking the truth? The best you can do is use reasoning like "there's no scient…

> Can you really be ripped off by psychics?

Once I went to a psychic who offered to read my fortune out of a crystal ball. Later I found out the ball was actually glass. Glass! That's an amorphous solid, the exact opposite of a crystal. How can you divine any truth such a chaotic structure? The very premise is ludicrous; she may have a large glass ball but clearly she had lost the rest of her marbles.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#175
post #145
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-files-leak... Amid taxi strikes and riots in Paris, Kalanick ordered French executives to retaliate by encouraging Uber drivers to stage a counter-protest with mass civil disobedience. Warned that doing so risked putting Uber drivers at risk of attacks from “extreme right thugs” who had infiltrated the taxi protests and were “spoiling for a fight”, Kalanick appea…

Ah, so it's the French Taxi drivers and far right thugs who were indulging in violence. But it's clearly Uber's fault. They were asking for it. /s

This is not "pff, violence won't happen". That's a subjective assessment. It's "okay, violence could happen, that would be fantastic for us! Let's send our employees so that we can use that as an argueing point!" (always good to make the other guy look like a violent thug).

All in the context of Uber intentionally breaking the law (which is not my assessment, it's their own, and that of the French authorities).

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#176
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i find it mindboggling that criminal records are so accessible in the US - so that something like ripoff report is a legal business there does not surprise me in the least

You think secret courts and prisons are better than public criminal records?

You can have courts and sentences be public (or at least, public enough) while giving people their privacy and keeping their criminal record private (or at least, not publicly disseminated and accessible to random people). It's how it works in most of the civilized world.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

That's the most expensive way. Wonder why should it be that way?

Well their contact us also lists an address and a phone number [1].

But also, I mean if your qualm is small there's a thing called "small claims court" where you can get it settled probably cheaper than otherwise if you put a value on your time.

[1]: https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/contact-google/

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone could make Google more responsive by publishing a guide on how to sue Google while representing yourself. Some basic information about court procedure and submissions, and a guide to the relevant law, such as defamation, would let a thousand litigants bloom, and Google would soon have a very real problem on their hands. Most likely you'd get Google's attention at the first step, and a probably solution.

If Google didn't index this guide, how would people find it?

The original internet: word of mouth.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#179
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So as is often the case the details are what matter. Google failed to remove defamatory content from their systems after being informed it was defamatory. That’s the case, and they lost because it’s their responsibility to respect such notifications. It’s like that hot coffee lawsuit. They were held 80% liable because the coffee was served at a seriously unsafe temperature, which isn’t total liability. She got 3rd de…

>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. It's not like the plaintiff went to Google with a prior legal judgment against the RipOff website telling Google to take it dow…

Primary publishers have to make that judgement all the time. If you get a book published by Harper Collins they're not going to let you put "anything not specifically already ruled defamation by a court" in it.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#180
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

I don't think it's reasonable for Google to remove content whenever someone just says its defamatory, in the absence of a court finding that it's actually defamatory. Otherwise we'd quickly lose every reference to Biden winning the 2020 election once it was widely known that the rule existed.

They don't have to remove content whenever someone just says its defamatory.

They have to remove defamatory content once someone has told them it's defamatory. Essentially the ball is put into Google's court at the point, with the question: are you willing to defend this as non-defamatory? Which is the same question all primary publishers face.

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