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Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

abc.net.au

211–220 of 220 posts

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#211
post #84

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…

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?

It isn't different.

Let's not change the subject - this isn't about responding to complaints - the suggestion here was basically that someone should have to review every single web page that gets indexed.

Either that's what we want or it isn't. Let's not change the subject because this is a line that might have to be drawn.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#212

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…

If you can't build your product within the bounds of laws and morals, your product sucks or you don't have what it takes to build such a product.

This is again, a great quip, but let's go back to the literal concrete question i asked, to see what line is getting drawn here.

Should Google, or whoever, have to literally review every single page they index?

If yes, how do you expect that to work. If no, what is actually being suggested beyond the quips?

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#213
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 not be ripped off by psychics? I mean come on

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

no, because they have not been notified, they also may not be a second publisher here. but go off king

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#215
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.

a settlement isn't just money, can you not read the article?

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And psychics don't pretend to get into long-running feuds with each other, and pretend to settle those feuds with drop-kicks and suplexes, in front of mass audiences. (At least, not to my knowledge)

Did you think I thought, and was implying, that wrestlers and psychics provided the exact same services as each other?

Because I don't. You get that, right?

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't build your product within the bounds of laws and morals, your product sucks or you don't have what it takes to build such a product.

This is again, a great quip, but let's go back to the literal concrete question i asked, to see what line is getting drawn here. Should Google, or whoever, have to literally review every single page they index? If yes, how do you expect that to work. If no, what is actually being suggested beyond the quips?

To answer your question: no.

Google's attempt at a defence implied that they should have checked the pages. There is plenty of internet related law to protect internet companies from responsibility for user submitted content. You can make tons of applications for tons of businesses without breaking the law, and that includes building a search engine.

In this case, Google was notified about the slanderous content on their platform. From that moment they knew, or reasonably could've known if a human actually dealt with their legal notices, that the content was breaking the law. They did not remove the material and the case was brought to court, where Google stated that they were a mere subordinate distributor left in the dark.

If they can't operate their product without dealing with legal complaints, then yes, they should hire more people or reduce the ways their search engine can break the law.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#218

There’s a difference between “settles” and “wins”. Sounds like they settled, but then they talk like she won…

Actually, I won on liability in two trials - 2015 and 2023. Damages were to be adjudicated separately because I was self represented and simply couldn't cope with doing a complete trial against Google's two law firms. This is the second liability decision if you are interested. https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/sa/SASC/...

You did this whole litigation without representation? I salute you. As a serial litigant, I know how hard and how exhausting that is.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#219
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#220
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of historical reasons overlapping here. One is that the country is so large that having that information be public is one of the ways the public protects itself from predatory behaviors... Otherwise, somebody can skip over to another jurisdiction and continue the behaviors they used to cheat people the next town over. In the era before mass communication that was a real problem (the "traveling snake oil…

I'm highly skeptical of this explanation because most countries are large enough to do that, and historically "accessing public records" was not easy so it doesn't seem all that useful. In my observation a far more likely explanation is that US culture sees "criminals" as subhuman monsters hardly worthy of consideration. I'm exaggerating a bit here, but I find general US attitudes towards crime and criminals unhealth…

Thanks for the long explanation, that makes sense.

I too feel that there is little desire to rehabilitate people who have committed a crime. Once you are in that category you are marked for life, and visibly. It's still a stigma in countries that don't have public records (people talk), but there is at least the possibility of becoming a better person and moving on.

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