Man battling Google wins $500K for search result links calling him a pedophile | Hacker News Reader

Man battling Google wins $500K for search result links calling him a pedophile

arstechnica.com

What i find baffling is that (according to this article) under Canadian law, you can post whatever defamatory content you want and as long as you dont get sued within a year, and no matter if the defamed party knows of it or not, it automatically becomes protected speech? Thats pretty messed up.

I think the article incorrectly summarizes the judge's order. The order makes clear that it was a lawyer telling the plaintiff that the _US state_ barred the action.

> [56] As for the possibility of suing the author of the Defamatory Post for defamation, the Plaintiff was advised by a lawyer in Town B that he was time-barred because, under [State A] law, the action must be brought within one year of its appearance, regardless of when the victim of the defamation sees the publication.

I don't think [State A] not being Canada does much to make that law more sensible.

Oh, yeah, I think it's a bad law. But whereas I'd find it baffling for Canada to have such a law, I'm somehow not at all surprised that there are US states that are OK with that: "peace, order, and good government" vs "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".

US does tend to be on the fairly extreme end of protecting speech.

'“Google variously ignored the Plaintiff, told him it could do nothing, told him it could remove the hyperlink on the Canadian version of its search engine but not the US one, but then allowed it to re-appear on the Canadian version after a 2011 judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in an unrelated matter involving the publication of hyperlinks,” judge Azimuddin Hussain wrote in his decision issued on March 28.'

What recourse does Google offer if false, defamatory information is found in their search results?

What would stop an organized cyber crime group from creating websites with false, defamatory information about people and blackmailing them for payment in order to take down the false, defamatory information?

>What recourse does Google offer if false, defamatory information is found in their search results?

Last I checked, Google was a search engine, an index of websites, not a judge of the contents of those websites.

>What would stop an organized cyber crime group from creating websites with false, defamatory information about people and blackmailing them for payment in order to take down the false, defamatory information?

Libel laws, for one. The correct course of action here, if the claim is not true, would be to sue the publisher of the false information for libel, which would be a guaranteed success, as it is provably false.

>Last I checked, Google was a search engine, an index of websites, not a judge of the contents of those websites.

Google is not an impartial index of websites. Google manipulates, removes, and selects the links they'd like to display, sometimes differently to each individual searcher. They are a publisher of work either way.

It seems potentially bad if Google, without any possible consequence, can make money by linking to international content which you can’t ever hope to successfully affect or address.

In the EU the "Right to be Forgotten" parts of GDPR and similar laws would likely apply:

"The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay and the controller shall have the obligation to erase personal data without undue delay"

https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/

However, this case was in Canada and Google does not enforce this GDPR requirement outside the EU:

"we don’t apply these delistings to services for countries outside the EU."

https://support.google.com/legal/answer/10769224?hl=en

I don't understand that ruling. It's a pretty clear cut case of first amendment. You can't sue a bookstore because you don't like what they sell, you go after the publisher of the book. He's the one liable for defamation.

> in an unrelated matter involving the publication of hyperlinks

That case was very much related. It said links to content isn't the same as posting the content itself.

"The Supreme Court of Canada ruled this morning that the online posting of a hyperlink does not constitute a publication of a defamatory statement. This unanimous decision in Crookes v. Newton, 2011 SCC 47 upholds online free speech rights, maintaining that an online link will only be defamatory if it actually repeats defamatory material." [0]

> What recourse does Google offer if false, defamatory information is found in their search results?

Nothing. What the man had to do was go against the host and author of the webpage.

> What would stop an organized cyber crime group from creating websites with false, defamatory information about people and blackmailing them for payment in order to take down the false, defamatory information?

Getting a hosting company/getting the hosting company to stay in business (Money has to come in to pay for servers).

[0] https://cippic.ca/en/crookes_v_newton

Related thread (yesterday):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35638740

- SEO yourself into some immoral act

- Sue Google

- Profit

Wow, 17 years later and he’s in his 70s now

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