Hacker News Reader

Comment by thesuperbigfrog | Hacker News Reader

'“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?

View on HN

>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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com