>We also remove content in response to valid legal requests
>If you want to remove a photo, profile link, or webpage from Google Search results, you usually need to ask the website owner (webmaster) to remove the information.
It seems she didn't get a judgement against Ripoff Report first. Google is not to blame here.
On one hand this seems bad because it implies that Google is sanctioning the links it returns... it's just a search engine, not a content curator. But the IP people have been making Google take down links for years so I suppose it's not that different. Correct me if I'm wrong.
My interpretation is that the case specifically hinged on whether auto-complete suggestions were published by Google, not the search results themselves.
One allegation is that RipoffReport is basically extorting people by having third parties post unredactable negative reviews on their "forum" and then asking a price to have them removed. RipoffReport is not liable because the forum posts are deemed user generated content, but in this case, Google's autocomplete suggestions are deemed to be published by Google, hence Google's liability. Is this understanding correct?
I think Google is not wrong here. It's just a search engine that allows you to search for a phrase on websites all over the internet. It doesn't (or at least shouldn't) attach value to that and take a stance/opinion. It should be left as an exercise to the reader to determine what information is factual and what information is not factual. I think you're getting in muddy waters when you're going to let an algorithm decide whether information is correct or not.
>It doesn't (or at least shouldn't) attach value to that and take a stance/opinion.
But it does, by its very nature Google removes some websites from its results and attaches a value to websites it does include in the form of Google search result rankings. It appears in other cases the court also found issue with the autocomplete functions produced by Google. Also it would not appear anyone expected Google's algorithm to determine truth as you suggest, at least in this case the Doctor was in communication with Google and she gave Google multiple opportunities to stop publishing/promoting the false content.
> at least in this case the Doctor was in communication with Google and she gave Google multiple opportunities to stop publishing/promoting the false content.
And I'm sure some people regularly contact Google asking for removal of "false" information about dinosaur fossils and the earth being more than a few thousand years old. Acting on any such request would be making a decision on the veracity of that information.
The courts should have told the plaintiff to sue the site publishing the information instead, not a search engine linking to that information. But, of course, Google is a bigger target, and makes for an easier emotional argument about "those foreign corporations", and foreign courts seem all too happy to entertain such arguments.
I don't care whether the original site's posting is true or false; I hope Google wins this on appeal either way. (By contrast, I'd have absolutely no problem with a defamation judgment against the actual site hosting the information, and if that site removes it, so will Google.)
>And I'm sure some people regularly contact Google asking for removal of "false" information about dinosaur fossils and the earth being more than a few thousand years old. Acting on any such request would be making a decision on the veracity of that information.
Google already does this...they remove websites from their results and they make a decision on the veracity of the remaining information through their results. As to the dinosaur fossils...they don't have standing to sue over defamation, so Google is protected from making the hard decisions there.
>The courts should have told the plaintiff to sue the site publishing the information...
Where you find Google is just "a search engine linking to the information", according to the article, the court found Google was both publishing and promoting the defamation. I can see courts splitting on this issues for sure, so you might get your hope on appeal, but I don't think it is an intellectually dishonest conclusion to view search result/ads as more than "links" but impressions Google approves for publication in their search results.
Traditionally, if someone were to publish something false in a newspaper the plaintiff could name the author, editor and newspaper publisher. I am not for limiting the rights of individuals over corporations. In fairness I recognize technology makes it easier than ever to publish/republish false statements, but I am more inclined to feel bad for the individual being defamed on a scale never seen before more than I am to feel bad for Google because the Court didn't buy their argument that they should not be liable because they are just a "search engine" and it would burden them to stop linking to false information about people.
> they make a decision on the veracity of the remaining information through their results
No, they don't. They attempt to figure out which site you might be looking for based on the terms you typed in; relevance to your search terms may or may not be correlated with veracity.
> As to the dinosaur fossils...they don't have standing to sue over defamation, so Google is protected from making the hard decisions there.
The comment I replied to said the plaintiff had "contacted" Google, and expected that to suffice. I gave an example of people who "contact" Google and should rightfully be ignored. Now you're saying that those people don't have standing to sue so it's OK.
Truth is the ultimate defense against defamation. You seem to be arguing that Google is in a position to judge whether content is defamation (which necessarily involves a determination of truth), based on nothing but someone contacting them. How, precisely, would you propose they do that? This particular court certainly didn't offer any insights there.
> I am not for limiting the rights of individuals over corporations.
Judgments should not under any circumstances depend on who the plaintiff or defendant are. This judgment is precedent for a similar suit against a far smaller defendant. I'm not concerned that Google will be deeply hurt by a six-figure court judgment and hope they win on appeal because it'll help their bottom line; I think this sets a completely broken precedent and I hope Google wins on appeal to reverse that.
> Traditionally, if someone were to publish something false in a newspaper the plaintiff could name the author, editor and newspaper publisher.
Of course. But that doesn't mean the plaintiff should be able to name a third-party who provides a list of headlines found in newspapers, especially not if they haven't actually sued the newspaper and won.
> No, they don't. They attempt to figure out which site you might be looking for based on the terms you typed in; relevance to your search terms may or may not be correlated with veracity.
Can you give an example of a search where relevance doesn't correlate with a common cultural sense of veracity? I think they're more intertwined than you seem to be willing to concede.
> Can you give an example of a search where relevance doesn't correlate with a common cultural sense of veracity?
If I search for "Bob Smith", I'm not looking for "pages with exclusively true statements about Bob Smith"; I'm looking for 'pages that mention the phrase "Bob Smith"'. Perhaps someone mentioned a great story whose protagonist was named Bob Smith, and I wanted to find it. Perhaps someone wrote an article entitled 'Naming your programming language "Go" is like naming your kid "Bob Smith"'. Perhaps I'm trying to find a comment on a news site that used "Bob Smith" as an example name.
If you run "grep" over a set of files, and one of the results makes you angry, do you blame grep, or whoever wrote the file grep found? Does the answer somehow change if you use a more sophisticated search algorithm (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tf–idf)?
You may want to consider that Google allegedly had knowledge of Ripoff Report's practices, and had already suspended their AdWords account because of unsavory business practices, but refused to remove the defamatory content against her: http://www.authorizedstatement.org/statements/authorized-sta...
The problem is that Google isn't “just a search engine”, it is THE search engine.
If someone wants to learn about you, he will “google” you.
Of course Google didn't chose this, but on the other hand it worked hard to reach this position and keeps working hard to stay there.
It is a very difficult matter to discuss and come up with some rules or limits but it is an issue that should be addressed. Google search results can destroy lives. Inaction isn't an option. With respect to freedom of speech and free trade, we should find some way to mitigate such problems. EU's “right to be forgotten” is a step towards a solution to this puzzle.
Why stop at the website? Using that logic it's not the website that destroys lives it's the author. But that's not how we have traditionally defined liability in defamation cases, and the reasoning is pretty sound. If the Google search result contains the false statement Google is now part of the problem.
Actually, it is how we have traditionally defined liability in defamation cases. This is like suing the newsstand because the local paper is defaming you.
Except, according to the article, in this case the Court found Google published and promoted the defamation vis-a-vis its search results.
A newsstand may in fact be liable if they took a defamatory statement out of a paper and published that false statement like an ad/signage attached to the newsstand.
> Except, according to the article, in this case the Court found Google published and promoted the defamation vis-a-vis its search results.
And the point is that this is stupid. This is like suing a newsstand for displaying the headlines from a local newspaper that is defaming you. This is not publishing.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to just call Google a "newsstand". If the same company owned all the newsstands and they all carried the same papers, at what point are they publishing? (Especially if they're excerpting papers to promote them.)
You create a false dichotomy by presenting only two options: suing Google or sitting still and suffering through the defamation. But she has another recourse, a recourse that long existed before Google did: suing those who created the false information in the first place.
No, I didn't write anything like that. I said that some search results can cause serious problems and there should be a legal framework to prevent this.
Inaction is ignoring these issues and letting affected people suffer while fighting battles they can't win.
The solution you suggest isn't in touch with reality. The people who created the false information probably aren't (they or their business) in the same country as the victim. A legal battle can be very long and very expensive. If the victim is jobless for example and can't find a job due to the false information, how can he/she go sue an entity in a foreign country? What prevents the perpetrators from creating a new company with the same data in a different country?
Google isn't in the wrong but they acquired so much power, that now they also have responsibility to help innocent people affected very negatively by their business.
> I think you're getting in muddy waters when you're going to let an algorithm decide whether information is correct or not.
I don't think that's what she was asking for. She didn't expect Google's algorithms to automatically make things right. She did expect that when she contacted Google repeatedly, with what was a justified request (we can assume it was justified because she won in court), that Google would respond appropriately.
I don't buy this "we're just a search engine" thing. Being just a search engine isn't an ethically neutral choice, merely because it's inaction. Here we see Google doing the equivalent of walking on by when someone's being roughed up.
This is not an attempt to avoid say, knowledge of what a house looks like. If anything, Professor Duffy is more than happy to have the legitimate information about her reputation and this case out there. The problem is with the placement and publicity of false information. She's made multiple public statements and attempts to broadcast her side of this, so it isn't the sort of thing where the Streisand Effect would apply.
If you're name was at the top of Google as being a Woman beating peadophile and you had tried everything to get rid of it, I'm sure you'd try and get Google to remove it from their index too.
The reputation, career and professional damage can be massive from something like this.
There are many names that are exact duplicates. Searches that are correct for one person may not be correct for the other, so I cannot see a definitive resolution for the problem.
Dr Janice Duffy, the woman in the article, had many false & libelous statements written about her on a website - in this case being RipOffReport. Per Google's Removal Policy[1], the search engine forces you to contact a webmaster to remove the offending material yourself, or supply a valid court order of defamation. RipOffReport itself only gives you a few options: 1) She could've written a rebuttal to these claims, or 2) Paid off RipOffReport to do an "Arbitration" (extortion).[2]
She also could've sued RipOffReport in addition to Google - but like Google/Reddit/et al, they are protected by the Communications Decency Act in the States - not making them liable for anything users post.
In the end, what she should've done was sue the original authors of those posts on RipOffReport - winning the case (burden of proof is on her), and then having Google de-list the search result.[3]
Taking the third route in using a court order is by far the best way to go.
I'm curious, is a TV station liable for content of Syndicated shows, or commercials or all the other content it did not produce but choose to show?
Are newspapers liable for the quotes they print? I thought not, and that is why they always so careful about saying "it was reported" or "so said who and who" to make clear any quotes were not coming from the paper and so they weren't liable.
A search result is even less than a quote. Autosuggest, hmmmm.
Can't google sue for defamation for this statement by Dr Janice Duffy “... I beat the bastards,” or this one "... Google can’t come into our country, destroy reputations and get away with it.”
Both are defamatory and the first is patently false (maybe so much so it then doesn't count as defamation) the second though is certainly debatable and plausibly harmful to Google.
TV stations are certainly liable for content they didn't produce but choose to show.
Newspapers can be liable for simply repeating a quote but newsworthiness is a valid defence, provided the context is reporting rather than promoting the opinion.
The question in Google's case is whether the choices applied in their search algorithm constitute promotional choices or whether the engine is merely a robot reporting on available content.
I personally think the court is wrong here but promoting versus reporting is the question in play.
So were is the line drawn? Is a book shop liable for the content of the news papers they choose sell? Am I liable for a visible, slanderous headline from newspaper I carry on subway? If network chooses to prioritize traffic (i.e. anti-net-neutrality) are they then liable for content of that traffic?
If this is allowed to stand, it will set a precedent expanding Google's power, not restricting it. Now many content creators must fight under the judgment of Google, rather than the courts, whether what they write is defamation against another person, or risk their websites unlinked from Google's search results.
48 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 97.8 ms ] threadhttps://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061
>If you want to remove a photo, profile link, or webpage from Google Search results, you usually need to ask the website owner (webmaster) to remove the information.
It seems she didn't get a judgement against Ripoff Report first. Google is not to blame here.
If this stands, will everyone in Australia be able to have pages about them removed from Google searches with a simple request?
mentions extracts, links, and auto-complete results. My interpretation was that all three were considered defamatory.
But it does, by its very nature Google removes some websites from its results and attaches a value to websites it does include in the form of Google search result rankings. It appears in other cases the court also found issue with the autocomplete functions produced by Google. Also it would not appear anyone expected Google's algorithm to determine truth as you suggest, at least in this case the Doctor was in communication with Google and she gave Google multiple opportunities to stop publishing/promoting the false content.
And I'm sure some people regularly contact Google asking for removal of "false" information about dinosaur fossils and the earth being more than a few thousand years old. Acting on any such request would be making a decision on the veracity of that information.
The courts should have told the plaintiff to sue the site publishing the information instead, not a search engine linking to that information. But, of course, Google is a bigger target, and makes for an easier emotional argument about "those foreign corporations", and foreign courts seem all too happy to entertain such arguments.
I don't care whether the original site's posting is true or false; I hope Google wins this on appeal either way. (By contrast, I'd have absolutely no problem with a defamation judgment against the actual site hosting the information, and if that site removes it, so will Google.)
Google already does this...they remove websites from their results and they make a decision on the veracity of the remaining information through their results. As to the dinosaur fossils...they don't have standing to sue over defamation, so Google is protected from making the hard decisions there.
>The courts should have told the plaintiff to sue the site publishing the information...
Where you find Google is just "a search engine linking to the information", according to the article, the court found Google was both publishing and promoting the defamation. I can see courts splitting on this issues for sure, so you might get your hope on appeal, but I don't think it is an intellectually dishonest conclusion to view search result/ads as more than "links" but impressions Google approves for publication in their search results.
Traditionally, if someone were to publish something false in a newspaper the plaintiff could name the author, editor and newspaper publisher. I am not for limiting the rights of individuals over corporations. In fairness I recognize technology makes it easier than ever to publish/republish false statements, but I am more inclined to feel bad for the individual being defamed on a scale never seen before more than I am to feel bad for Google because the Court didn't buy their argument that they should not be liable because they are just a "search engine" and it would burden them to stop linking to false information about people.
No, they don't. They attempt to figure out which site you might be looking for based on the terms you typed in; relevance to your search terms may or may not be correlated with veracity.
> As to the dinosaur fossils...they don't have standing to sue over defamation, so Google is protected from making the hard decisions there.
The comment I replied to said the plaintiff had "contacted" Google, and expected that to suffice. I gave an example of people who "contact" Google and should rightfully be ignored. Now you're saying that those people don't have standing to sue so it's OK.
Truth is the ultimate defense against defamation. You seem to be arguing that Google is in a position to judge whether content is defamation (which necessarily involves a determination of truth), based on nothing but someone contacting them. How, precisely, would you propose they do that? This particular court certainly didn't offer any insights there.
> I am not for limiting the rights of individuals over corporations.
Judgments should not under any circumstances depend on who the plaintiff or defendant are. This judgment is precedent for a similar suit against a far smaller defendant. I'm not concerned that Google will be deeply hurt by a six-figure court judgment and hope they win on appeal because it'll help their bottom line; I think this sets a completely broken precedent and I hope Google wins on appeal to reverse that.
> Traditionally, if someone were to publish something false in a newspaper the plaintiff could name the author, editor and newspaper publisher.
Of course. But that doesn't mean the plaintiff should be able to name a third-party who provides a list of headlines found in newspapers, especially not if they haven't actually sued the newspaper and won.
Can you give an example of a search where relevance doesn't correlate with a common cultural sense of veracity? I think they're more intertwined than you seem to be willing to concede.
If I search for "Bob Smith", I'm not looking for "pages with exclusively true statements about Bob Smith"; I'm looking for 'pages that mention the phrase "Bob Smith"'. Perhaps someone mentioned a great story whose protagonist was named Bob Smith, and I wanted to find it. Perhaps someone wrote an article entitled 'Naming your programming language "Go" is like naming your kid "Bob Smith"'. Perhaps I'm trying to find a comment on a news site that used "Bob Smith" as an example name.
If you run "grep" over a set of files, and one of the results makes you angry, do you blame grep, or whoever wrote the file grep found? Does the answer somehow change if you use a more sophisticated search algorithm (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tf–idf)?
Doesn't Google already do that with the Knowledge Graph?
It is a very difficult matter to discuss and come up with some rules or limits but it is an issue that should be addressed. Google search results can destroy lives. Inaction isn't an option. With respect to freedom of speech and free trade, we should find some way to mitigate such problems. EU's “right to be forgotten” is a step towards a solution to this puzzle.
A newsstand may in fact be liable if they took a defamatory statement out of a paper and published that false statement like an ad/signage attached to the newsstand.
And the point is that this is stupid. This is like suing a newsstand for displaying the headlines from a local newspaper that is defaming you. This is not publishing.
At the point that they're producing the content. Anyone that's simply regurgitating someone else's content is not publishing.
You create a false dichotomy by presenting only two options: suing Google or sitting still and suffering through the defamation. But she has another recourse, a recourse that long existed before Google did: suing those who created the false information in the first place.
Inaction is ignoring these issues and letting affected people suffer while fighting battles they can't win.
The solution you suggest isn't in touch with reality. The people who created the false information probably aren't (they or their business) in the same country as the victim. A legal battle can be very long and very expensive. If the victim is jobless for example and can't find a job due to the false information, how can he/she go sue an entity in a foreign country? What prevents the perpetrators from creating a new company with the same data in a different country?
Google isn't in the wrong but they acquired so much power, that now they also have responsibility to help innocent people affected very negatively by their business.
I don't think that's what she was asking for. She didn't expect Google's algorithms to automatically make things right. She did expect that when she contacted Google repeatedly, with what was a justified request (we can assume it was justified because she won in court), that Google would respond appropriately.
https://gimletmedia.com/episode/40-the-flower-child/
The reputation, career and professional damage can be massive from something like this.
She also could've sued RipOffReport in addition to Google - but like Google/Reddit/et al, they are protected by the Communications Decency Act in the States - not making them liable for anything users post.
In the end, what she should've done was sue the original authors of those posts on RipOffReport - winning the case (burden of proof is on her), and then having Google de-list the search result.[3]
Taking the third route in using a court order is by far the best way to go.
[1] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1228138 [2] https://www.ripoffreport.com/Arbitration.aspx [3] https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=e...
Are newspapers liable for the quotes they print? I thought not, and that is why they always so careful about saying "it was reported" or "so said who and who" to make clear any quotes were not coming from the paper and so they weren't liable.
A search result is even less than a quote. Autosuggest, hmmmm.
Can't google sue for defamation for this statement by Dr Janice Duffy “... I beat the bastards,” or this one "... Google can’t come into our country, destroy reputations and get away with it.”
Both are defamatory and the first is patently false (maybe so much so it then doesn't count as defamation) the second though is certainly debatable and plausibly harmful to Google.
Newspapers can be liable for simply repeating a quote but newsworthiness is a valid defence, provided the context is reporting rather than promoting the opinion.
The question in Google's case is whether the choices applied in their search algorithm constitute promotional choices or whether the engine is merely a robot reporting on available content.
I personally think the court is wrong here but promoting versus reporting is the question in play.
So were is the line drawn? Is a book shop liable for the content of the news papers they choose sell? Am I liable for a visible, slanderous headline from newspaper I carry on subway? If network chooses to prioritize traffic (i.e. anti-net-neutrality) are they then liable for content of that traffic?
Well, they chose to show it. So yes.