Google shuts down Amazon unionization website
thestranger.com
thestranger.com
On top of that, Google's action may violate the National Labor Relations Act.[2] This could be construed as collusion between employers to violate the rights of workers to organize. Google has a record of colluding with other employers to violate labor law, from the famous "anti-poaching agreement".[3] So Google could have a hard time in court over this, since a pattern of illegal anti-labor activity has already been established.
[1] https://www.google.com/intl/en/sites/help/program_policy.htm... [2] https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/national-labor-relations-act [3] http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/
If you hold a monopoly, or near monopoly, you automatically get that obligation.
The NLRB has recently been deciding cases involving employee criticism of employers in social media.[1] "The focus of many of these recent rulings has been the protection of the right of employees to communicate with their coworkers about their terms and conditions of employment. Indeed, the NLRB has increasingly defined the contours of this right expansively." There are lawyers who take on such cases.[2]
[1] http://www.postschell.com/site/files/post__schell__nlrb_arti... [2] http://employee-rights-atty.com/the-censor-he-has-a-face-and...
No, it isn't. Because that would require google having said that. Google in fact, has said or written nothing as far as anyone can tell.
"On top of that, Google's action may violate the National Labor Relations Act.[2]"
No, again, it almost certainly doesn't. This is a pretty ridiculous claim, backed up by roughly no case law. It's pretty easy to see it would swallow pretty much all law if it was read the way you are :)
"So Google could have a hard time in court over this, since a pattern of illegal anti-labor activity has already been established."
This would pretty much be inadmissible in court to show anything, as evidence of "bad character" is not permissible to show someone did something in a different case.
"(a) Character Evidence.
(1) Prohibited Uses. Evidence of a person’s character or character trait is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character or trait.
... (b) Crimes, Wrongs, or Other Acts.
(1) Prohibited Uses. Evidence of a crime, wrong, or other act is not admissible to prove a person’s character in order to show that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character."
(Note the above is basic federal evidence law :P, if you wanted to sue over the NLR act. Most state evidence rules are similar in the civil realm, and differ a bit in the criminal realm)
When you tried going to the site Google would give you a page saying it had been removed for violating the TOS.
First, i was talking about the statement that the parent claimed was made that google felt unionization information violated it's TOS. Google has made no such statement that anyone has seen.
This is in fact, one of the main reason's it almost certainly can't be defamatory. Here, it looks like (and i say looks like because i still haven't seen real evidence. The links go to an error page that you can get to at any time :P) Google stated it took the page down for violating its TOS. If that is a true statement (it is irrelevant whether it violates the TOS, only if the statement is literally true), it's not defamation in any jurisdiction.
Let's assume for a second that such a thing would be something actionable under defamation law (probably not).
Truth and statements of reasonable opinion based on facts are defenses are defenses to defamation in almost all jurisdictions (including CA)
On the truth side, if Google removed the site because it believed it violated the TOS (and not for some other reason), then this is not a defamatory statement, as it is factually true that this is why google removed it. The secondary implied statement that it violates the TOS is almost certainly non-actionable[1]. For this view of teh statement, it's irrelevant whether it did violate the TOS, it matters is the statement literally true - ie is this why google removed it.
Further, the law does not require absolute truth, and in fact, in a defamation lawsuit like this one (a matter of public concern), the plaintiff will be the one having to prove the statement is false. The defendant will not have to prove it is true[2]
So someone is going to have to prove that google did not in fact, take it down for violating the TOS (again, it's irrelevant whether google was right or wrong about whether it violates the TOS). Or prove that the possibly-implied "it is a tos violation" is not a valid or reasonable opinion.
In a case like this, depending on the circumstances, the plaintiff may also have to prove Google acted with actual malice (IE knew it was a false statement).
This is all a long way of saying: Defamation isn't what people think it is. I am allowed to state all the facts i want. Defamation by implication is not a thing in california. The closest you come is defamation per se. You'd have to claim false light or something in california (and in false light, the implication would have to be not just false, but highly offensive to a reasonable person. You'd fail this test since most reasonable people don't give a crap if i brand you a tos violator, and in fact, joke about violating EULA's and TOS's.). You'd also have to prove negligence.
Good luck with all that :)
[1] If you state the facts on which you are basing your opinion, and the opinion you state could be reasonably drawn from those truthful facts, you will be protected even if your opinion turns out to be incorrect. This also assumes you are in a defamation by implication state. California is not one of them.
[2] *As a matter of law, in cases involving public figures or matters of public concern, the burden is on the plaintiff to prove falsity in a defamation action. Nizam-Aldine v. City of Oakland, 47 Cal. App. 4th 364 (Cal. Ct. App. 1996).
https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/
So they were running on Google site's. The site violated that TOS. While I don't know the particulars, this seems like less of a story than if Google had somehow wiped an ordinary domain from search results.
In this case, there wasn't any save-page-now involved. We got the front page of the site on Dec 22, but didn't try to crawl the subpages (the actual posts) until Feb 6, which is after the site was disabled. This lag between front page and interior pages is pretty typical behavior for our Heretrix crawl queues, alas.
Note: you have to select the latest capture as the default still shows the Goog's off-line messages.
"Google may also stop providing Services to you, or add or create new limits to our Services at any time."
We'd still like to know why they did so, in this case.
Stating that Google shut this particular site down because 'they were advocating for the interests of labor over the interests of large high tech companies' is long-jumping to a completely unsupported conclusion.
While a human being looks at it; they just put up a generic "this blank has been blocked for terms of service violations".
And someone making $200k a year probably spent about 8 seconds thinking about whether to flush this particular site.
"Can't they find someone else to do this job? My stomach aches. I hear there's a new sushi chef over the next building..."
None that I know of.
Did someone here verify that the site ever actually down, or was this a cool publicity stunt?
"Amazon has a management abuse problem. This was made clear in the August article by the New York Times. Even worse is that Amazon is in denial about this problem and claims that all employees should report their management problems to HR or to Jeff Bezos himself. This site documents all of the cases where Amazon managers have mistreated their employees and escalating only made it worse and never helped the employees deal with their bad managers.
Amazon is a great company for its customers. It's about time that it became a great company for its really hard working employees as well.
To add your story to this site, email theFACEofAmazon @ gmail.com or anonymously leave a voicemail at (425) 310-2347. We will never disclose your personal information, so please include as many details as you are comfortable sharing."
I am particularly interested in the "FIRED FOR CONTACTING JEFF" story.
Another shibboleth is "coax": One syllable or two?
I would love to be able to donate to the site's owners to keep their site running on another hosting service.