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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

#21

Post by phendrenad2 »

> The Court went on to note that the mental element depends on whether the defendant is a “primary publisher” or a “secondary publisher”. A “primary publisher” may be held liable for defamation regardless of whether it knows of the defamatory material, whereas a “secondary publisher” is only held liable if it knows that what it was publishing contains the passage in question or is reckless or careless as to its containing such a passage

Why stop there? Hacker News is now a "tertiary publisher" because it links to Google.com, which links to defamatory content! Hell, the judge, in the act of commenting on this case, is a 5th-level publisher! For shame!

Anyway, Australia is ranked dead last in my personal ranking of countries that "get it". The cluelessness train keeps rolling over there. We get silly internet laws and even sillier interpretations of silly internet laws every day.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#22

Post by herodotus »

>"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 bizarre to me, since it seems to imply that some human has to read every web page linked by Google. Even to suggest that Google must respond to every complaint of content on third party websites just cannot possibly scale.

On the other, there is a party that is responsible for the defamatory content, namely whatever web app had collected and posted the comments. The claimant should have pursued them, not Google.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#23

Post by csunbird »

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 suicide due to bad advice given by the psychics. This was untrue.

Very interesting part. Later in the article:

> In relation to justification (truth), the Court found no evidence supporting Google’s argument that Dr. Duffy stalked or persistently and obsessively harassed any of the psychics.

Am I missing something important here? Dr. Duffy clearly defamed a business with a lie, and some other people (other site users) pointed this up, in a very cruel way, to her in a forum with user submitted content. Then Dr. Duffy sues Google instead of the Ripoff Report forum?

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#24

Post by shadowgovt »

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…

Google has a takedown process and it failed. At that point, Safe Harbor no longer applies and we're in this category of "What standard would a newspaper be held accountable to?"

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#25

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

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…

> because it 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

This is the second case she launched against Google. The first one determined that Google was publishing defamatory information, they settled, but continued to publish the information.

So this is probably a situation where they should have had a human looking over it.

"Looking at every page" doesn't scale, but "looking at every page we lost a court case over" should be doable, you would think.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#26

Post by numbsafari »

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.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#27

Post by shadowgovt »

Lacerda69 wrote: post #7
HPsquared wrote: post #5

Seems to be about Google making something from "Ripoff Report" available, on which were defamatory statements about the plaintiff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripoff_Report An interesting business model, to be sure... And a clash of two legal regimes, one in which Ripoff Report can operate and another in which Google can be sued for indexing / linking to them. It's like, pick your poison...

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

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 salesman" is one iconic example), So making records public to anyone willing to go search them was the least protection the governments could provide.

The calculus changes in the era of ubiquitous communication and digital search, but broadly speaking Americans still feel they should be protected from the snake oil salesman.

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#28

Post by Zambyte »

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…

> Even to suggest that Google must respond to every complaint of content on third party websites just cannot possibly scale.

Must everything scale?

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#29

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google

#30

Post by tyingq »

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…

What about this bit, though? Feels like they made their own bed to me.

"Google continued to publish the defamatory content in Australia for two years after it was found to be defamatory. In 2022, again self-represented, I endured another trial. Further details are on this page."

https://drjaniceduffy.com/

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