Google Found Guilty of Libel In Search Results Case

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I guess Google will be taking removal requests a little more seriously after this. Unless of course the search giant gets this decision overturned.

The jury at the Supreme Court of Victoria agreed with Google up to a point. The company wasn’t responsible for the results until Trkulja asked it to take them down, it said. (Read the decision in full here.) Because it stuck to its guns, Google must pay $200,000 in damages.
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The obvious answer is to totally block Australia in protest until the appeal comes up.

This was not a fault of a search engine to show the results of what is there, it is like blaming the wind on someone farting or the sky for getting wet when it rains.
 
Nanan said:
The obvious answer is to totally block Australia in protest until the appeal comes up.

This was not a fault of a search engine to show the results of what is there, it is like blaming the wind on someone farting or the sky for getting wet when it rains.
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My thoughts exactly. Cut off the country from services.
 
Doing take downs of individual search results would be a nightmare ... however, allowing sites to engage in Libelous or unscrupulous behaviors is also bad ... perhaps they could compromise and allow the black listing of sites with these types of requests ... black listed sites could be bumped down to the 4th or 5th page of search results and be ineligible for paid placement ... maybe a solution like that would work (since there are already a variety of black listing tools used by search engines) ... having your entire site blacklisted for individual postings would also provide incentives for the sites to police themselves
 
kbrickley said:
Doing take downs of individual search results would be a nightmare ... however, allowing sites to engage in Libelous or unscrupulous behaviors is also bad ... perhaps they could compromise and allow the black listing of sites with these types of requests ... black listed sites could be bumped down to the 4th or 5th page of search results and be ineligible for paid placement ... maybe a solution like that would work (since there are already a variety of black listing tools used by search engines) ... having your entire site blacklisted for individual postings would also provide incentives for the sites to police themselves
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If that's the case, you'd have companies paying people to post garbage on message boards or other parts of their competitor's websites with the explicit purposes of getting them blacklisted.
 
ballistic90 said:
If that's the case, you'd have companies paying people to post garbage on message boards or other parts of their competitor's websites with the explicit purposes of getting them blacklisted.
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At least it would then get the courts bogged down with sites and companies suing each other so they wouldn't have any time or money to deal with the messengers (search engines) :D
 
kbrickley said:
Doing take downs of individual search results would be a nightmare ... however, allowing sites to engage in Libelous or unscrupulous behaviors is also bad ... perhaps they could compromise and allow the black listing of sites with these types of requests ... black listed sites could be bumped down to the 4th or 5th page of search results and be ineligible for paid placement ...
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Unacceptable.

I absolutely do not accept that it is the responsibility of search providers to censor searches in any way, nor to provide intentional preference in specific cases either beyond normal useful algorithms.
 
Ducman69 said:
Unacceptable.

I absolutely do not accept that it is the responsibility of search providers to censor searches in any way, nor to provide intentional preference in specific cases either beyond normal useful algorithms.
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I would agree that it shouldn't be the responsibility of the search provider BUT it must be SOMEONES' responsibility ... maybe we could push the blacklisting function back to the DNS (since I think blacklisting sites is the easiest way to police this kind of activity)
 
from article said:
“The sites in Google’s search results are controlled by those sites’ webmasters, not by Google,” a company spokesperson wrote after the result. Which is exactly what it told Trkulja in 2009: contact the sites to have the offensive content removed. (He pursued that path as well, winning a similarly-sized libel award from Yahoo, which actually hosted one of the sites.)
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Ugh, so they go after the deep pockets (Yahoo and Google) instead of the author of the web site itself. Smells like a get rich quick scheme to me, and the author of the web site were perhaps correct in saying that Trkuja have criminal ties.
 
kbrickley said:
I would agree that it shouldn't be the responsibility of the search provider BUT it must be SOMEONES' responsibility ... maybe we could push the blacklisting function back to the DNS (since I think blacklisting sites is the easiest way to police this kind of activity)
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It's the responsibility of the person(s) hosting the content.

With that being said, Google should just ban Australia from it's services. See how the people of Australia like not being able to use Google. ;)
 
kbrickley said:
I would agree that it shouldn't be the responsibility of the search provider BUT it must be SOMEONES' responsibility ... maybe we could push the blacklisting function back to the DNS (since I think blacklisting sites is the easiest way to police this kind of activity)
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How about we simply make it the responsibility of the offended party to sue the site that actually contains the offending data. Then if a court decision mandates the removal of said offending data the courts can also rule that search engines should block offending data as well. However, I do not feel that it should be the responsibility of the search engine to be the police in this matter.
 
They go after Google because so much data goes through Google's hands. There is already precedent for getting content taken off a website if it is slandering someone and that generally applies across most first world nations. Making the search provider responsible, on the other hand, is a whole other ballgame. As was noted, Google has deeper pockets so you can expect a nice hefty pay-day compared to someone's personal blog.
 
bbenz33 said:
How about we simply make it the responsibility of the offended party to sue the site that actually contains the offending data. Then if a court decision mandates the removal of said offending data the courts can also rule that search engines should block offending data as well. However, I do not feel that it should be the responsibility of the search engine to be the police in this matter.
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I agree it shouldn't be the responsibility of the search provider ... however, since the offending site and offended party aren't always in the same jurisdiction we need to make sure the rules don't allow sites to hide in jurisdictions that are hard to sue ... maybe we allow the offended party to sue in their jurisdiction and if the offending site doesn't show for the case then they block the DNS until the issue is resolved ;)
 
kbrickley said:
I would agree that it shouldn't be the responsibility of the search provider BUT it must be SOMEONES' responsibility ...
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It should only be the responsibility of the person "saying" (by whatever means of distribution) the knowingly false damaging libel.

If Obama's campaign for example spreads lies about a political opponent, you don't sue CNBC for allowing the commercial on their channel or Comcast for distributing it via their network IMO. You go after Obama's Administration, the source of the libel. :)
 
Ducman69 said:
It should only be the responsibility of the person "saying" (by whatever means of distribution) the knowingly false damaging libel.

If Obama's campaign for example spreads lies about a political opponent, you don't sue CNBC for allowing the commercial on their channel or Comcast for distributing it via their network IMO. You go after Obama's Administration, the source of the libel. :)
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I don't think that is the issue ... THOSE kinds of lawsuits go through all the time ... and I think the ruling made in THIS case was incorrect and it shouldn't be Google's problem ... however, I am more concerned with problems that cross international boundaries ... if the site is in China and the offended party is in the USA then the person should be able to sue in the USA and not China (and hold the site accountable for the rules of the country they are sued in) ... and vice versa ... since not all countries have robust libel and plagerism laws they shouldn't be able to escape the legal system because of their location ... since the actual DNS servers are more tightly controlled by the international governments it should be easy to block specific IPs that commit violations, and not involve the search engines at all
 
Skillz said:
With that being said, Google should just ban Australia from it's services. See how the people of Australia like not being able to use Google. ;)
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Not that I would mind, but it would be nice not to tar all Aussies with the same brush :D

I don't think he should of won this and will probably lose it on appeal.

But when I first saw the case, it reminded me a lot of the torrent site arguments, in regards to the fact that they don't own, create or store the content (illegal or otherwise) but are held accountable for what others put on their site.
 
kbrickley said:
I don't think that is the issue ... THOSE kinds of lawsuits go through all the time ... and I think the ruling made in THIS case was incorrect and it shouldn't be Google's problem ... however, I am more concerned with problems that cross international boundaries ... if the site is in China and the offended party is in the USA then the person should be able to sue in the USA and not China (and hold the site accountable for the rules of the country they are sued in) ... and vice versa ... since not all countries have robust libel and plagerism laws they shouldn't be able to escape the legal system because of their location ... since the actual DNS servers are more tightly controlled by the international governments it should be easy to block specific IPs that commit violations, and not involve the search engines at all
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Wait, what? You want people in China, to be able to sue in China, under China's laws, for what someone in the US said, on a US server? That just goes to the other (even worse) extreme, by making it so everything on the internet must comply by the sum of every single country's laws, even ones with horribly restrictive laws on speech or content.
 
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