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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

#201

Post by DrJaniceDuffy »

mattstir wrote: post #144
Lacerda69 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nah she won and did a great service to her fellow human beings. this was not lost or wasted time. people spend decades on far more "useless" things - not that there is anything wrong with that

> she won and did a great service to her fellow human beings She didn't win, they settled out of court. The article definitely does its best to avoid mentioning even a single detail about the case beyond the outcome, and even that it misconstrues. Dr. Duffy left a bad review for some psychics on the site "RipOff Report" and lied about her friend’s wife committing suicide due to bad advice given by the psychics. A few…

Actually I did win - on liability - twice. They settled on damages out of court. This is the second liability win:https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/sa/SASC/...

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#202

Post by DrJaniceDuffy »

jeffbee wrote: post #13
dekken_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep, while I agree defamation is bad, I find the whole "publisher" argument somewhat obsolete. If everyone can be a publisher, then no one is.

The first party is not even the first party, since this "Ripoff Report" site is user-contributed content. It looks like this plaintiff and some American woman were shitposting on that site, and Google indexed it, and the Australian woman sued Google. Full Streisand. https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/janice-duffy-psychic-st...

Why would you publish a link to the defamatory content? I know what the Streisand effect is and I can tell you that because of it I have been subjected to horrible abuse over the past few year, even threats put in my letter box.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#203

Post by DrJaniceDuffy »

account42 wrote: post #119
kkielhofner wrote: post #57

As other commenters have noted this is a classic pyrrhic victory. If nothing else I have to respect her because I cannot imagine the tenacity it took to pursue this. I can't speak to the merits or substance of the case but I know I don't have it. It's clear from the article she's a fighter with her initial reaction to discovering this: "She contemplated taking her life, saying it destroyed her career in research." To…

The woman made up shit about some psychics (after finding out the hard way that there is no such thing as a psychic) and then got mad again when she was served some of that same medicine. Sounds more like someone that wanted to avoid the consequences of her own choices rather than a courageous fighter standing up to the big evil corporation.

No, I did not ;make up shit'. I was going through a depression and got scammed. If you look on ripoff report and online there are hundreds of similar complaints. I formed a support group and the posts were designed to stop this because the scammers were losing money from ripping off vulnerable people.

Ripoff Report is an extortion racket, I just didn't know it at the time. I have referenced other US court decisions to that effect in other comments.

I did not want to turn this into a fight against an 'evil corporation' that was the actions of Google.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#204

Post by DrJaniceDuffy »

mattstir wrote: post #150
kkielhofner wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't commenting on any of these points, I specifically said "I can't speak to the merits or substance of the case". I certainly didn't say anything about going up against an "evil corporation". I'm trying to reference the humanity aspects of the situation, which I've found time and time again seems to be completely lost on HN (see: downvotes). It's called empathy.

> It's called empathy. I suppose it's just hard for many to feel empathy for someone who would go to such great lengths to avoid the consequences of their own actions. The timeline of events is just insane: Dr. Duffy consults with psychics about a romantic partner, gets upset when the psychics don't guess the true outcome, proceeds to lie about her friend's wife committing suicide due to the psychics, has a few posts…

Seriously, what would YOU do if you were falsely accused of crimes and it destroyed your ability to work? I made law, with no legal training, and this means that some people who are falsely accused of crimes that are published for the world to see can get it removed. I have been contacted by a lot of people who have been able to get abusive and defamatory content written by ex-partners, for example, removed because of my legal precedent.

I would rather stand up for something than be a judgemental asshole!

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#205

Post by DrJaniceDuffy »

kkielhofner wrote: post #186
mattstir wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's called empathy. I suppose it's just hard for many to feel empathy for someone who would go to such great lengths to avoid the consequences of their own actions. The timeline of events is just insane: Dr. Duffy consults with psychics about a romantic partner, gets upset when the psychics don't guess the true outcome, proceeds to lie about her friend's wife committing suicide due to the psychics, has a few posts…

To me this sounds like reason for more empathy. These are not the actions of someone who is well.

Please see my responses above. There is nothing 'wrong' with my mental health. I went through a depression, got scammed, formed a support group, recovered and fought a corporation that profits from enabling extortion on a website that destroys businesses and individuals and charges thousands of dollars to 'rehabilitate' reputations.

There are numerous court judgements in the US that uphold the fact that ripoff report is an extortion racket. Google have known about this racket since 2009 https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/remove-page-from-google/

I am not a murderer, or pedophile or criminal and at least I stood up for myself and others. Because of the legal precedent that I set (and which was ratified in the High Court) others in common law nations can get content removed. I have been contacted by a number of people who said that in desperation they went to lawyers who were able to reference my legal precedent and get content removed that threatened to destroy their lives and livelihoods.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#206

Post by DrJaniceDuffy »

kkielhofner wrote: post #57

As other commenters have noted this is a classic pyrrhic victory. If nothing else I have to respect her because I cannot imagine the tenacity it took to pursue this. I can't speak to the merits or substance of the case but I know I don't have it. It's clear from the article she's a fighter with her initial reaction to discovering this: "She contemplated taking her life, saying it destroyed her career in research." To…

I had no choice....my career was destroyed because of the defamation...Google wanted to crush me rather than give me back my life and ability to work ...and spent millions of dollars on its own legal costs...it is what it is...

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#207

Post by AdrianB1 »

arp242 wrote: post #188
AdrianB1 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Nero is dead and dead men don't suffer from a bad reputation. Nero was also emperor, whereas this person is not a public figure. It needs to be proportionate, and "rest of your life" sounds disproportionate for something like this. It also depends on how unique your name is how badly you will get "punished". My name is unique; as far as I know I'm the only person on the planet with my name. People named "John Smith"…

Dead people don't suffer from a bad reputation, but bad people should, dead or alive. Don't want a bad reputation? Don't be a bad person. It's that simple. What you did will be there forever, think before acting.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#209

Post by gspencley »

Karellen wrote: post #127
gspencley wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". Well, I would suggest that both are a "rip off" in the sense that they offer claims without evidence. But a distinction that I see between religious services and psychics is that religious services are not offering financial transact…

> But the fact remains that a lot of people still believe. But also, a lot of people still believe in professional wrestling. Are pro wrestlers ripping people off? Were pro wrestlers ripping people off worse in the '80s and earlier, when they tried really hard to maintain kayfabe, including denying the existence of kayfabe? If you pay money to psychics and they tell you the sorts of things you paid them to tell you,…

> But also, a lot of people still believe in professional wrestling.

Being a professional wrestling fan myself, I don't know of any, but ok I'll play along ...

> Are pro wrestlers ripping people off?

I've never heard of a wrestling fan going to a show for life changing advice, or in a desperate attempt to reconnect with their dead child. Nor have I ever heard of a professional wrestler offering such services.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#210

Post by DannyBee »

numbsafari wrote: post #116
DannyBee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not just a fun quip: it's a moral principle that I really think more people in our industry should come around to. What we do has consequences. Often times, profound consequences on vast numbers of lives. We have a responsibility, as individual contributors, managers, leaders, and "founders", for the outcomes of our work. If Google is as smart as they'd like us all to believe, they can find a way to make their b…

"It's not just a fun quip: it's a moral principle that I really think more people in our industry should come around to."

Which i actually buy into, and have lived for many years, but it also just seems a bit silly applied to this case.

The usual answer is "it's not my job", which you use here.

That's great - throwing rocks from the sidelines is real easy, but it's not clear exactly what you want to happen, so let's instead actually be clear and concrete about that.

So again, concretely: Is your suggestion that someone should review every single web page crawled by a search engine, Google or anyone else?

If not, can we move past the silly quips and try to get to a better place constructively?

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