Google loses Australia 'gangland' defamation lawsuit
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
I'm not saying the man was wrong for demanding Google take down the results. I'm also not saying he is right. Google was working as intended. The site they had crawled made an unfortunate implication. This isn't Google's fault, this is the downside to being involved in a crime. You have limited control over what others say about you or how they use your information. Google is in the sticky situation of legally needing not to offend, but also legally needing to be as impartial as possible. The courts are making this extremely difficult for them. If anything is directly to blame, it's a lack of understanding the nature of search engines.
This further goes to show startup founders the troubling legal situation that exists in the world. Bring a lawyer onboard, but even then you have to recognize that you will likely find yourself in a sticky situation at some point.
In reply to your comment of:
it didn't work exactly as intended: "As a result of the attack Mr Trkulja said that entering his name into Google Images brought up images of other people beneath which his name appeared. He said some of these figures were allegedly murderers and one a drug trafficker."
If the internet thinks that his name is associated with murderers and drug traffickers, then I think it's part of the job of a search engine to reflect that. Search engines don't just help you find information, they also help you find conversation.
It's sad to think of all the wasted time this person is spending posting here, all because he/she called someone's post "stupid". Hellbanning should be reserved for true trolls.
Or you just create a new username.
Which is why it seems particular unjust in borderline cases. It should be reserved for intentional trolls and spammer only.
Even worse, qrafti.com is a joke/troll site. It's not particular surprising that nodrama fell for it. The joke is not revealed until you try and use the site. nodrama cannot be faulted for only reading the cover copy.
If you have showdead on, you can check it out at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4217358
Moderators, please correct this injustice. Thanks.
"What are the sites that mention 'Milorad Trkulja'?"
"well, one of the sites is this melbourne crime site..."
It's kind of interesting to consider that Google -- by finding that result and giving it to you (especially with a snippet) -- is in fact repeating the statements contained in the result. However, it seems like they should be able to argue that it's not libel, because it is a fact that some site wrote that content. If that's not upheld, search engines become useless or sued out of existence (as does, say, the news).
This is the dangerous water we're wading into with any "right to forget" focusing on search engines (because they're the big fish and can bear it financially, essentially) instead of the actual source of whatever a person wants forgotten. You can pretty easily imagine large sections of the internet that aren't allowed to be indexed based on arbitrary submissions by people, presumably unevenly applied if there's not a central clearinghouse of "statements of which we shall not speak", but instead, notices are sent to whatever search engines/major sites that the person happens to notice (DMCA takedown notices fit that bill too well already, but this would be even worse, as it's not specific links, but "don't associate my (somehow disambiguated) name with this subject").
It's hard to know exactly what to do in this case, though, because the original offending site really does appear to be "defunct" and the only links I can find to it lead to a domain registration page. The search results are also now flooded with this story, of course, so, is he only winning on past defamation? The procedure should be to get the offending site to take down the content and then have Google remove it from its cache, but that appears to be already done.
I agree. What happens when the original site takes down the content, but it stays in Google's cache even after they've been contacted?
What if the content was very much worse? (eg, 'NAME is a convicted pedophile', with images of the person's face; where that allegation is totally false and malicious.)
EDIT: Looks like I'm mostly wrong about this particular case.
(http://ozsoapbox.com/melbourne/yahoo-held-liable-for-search-...)
I believe that is the way you do it. In theory, it will fall out of results on its own, but you can request it be removed from results (but only after it's been removed from the site):
http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...
(appears to require a google account, which is shitty, but maybe they get a lot of fraud here or something)
> What if the content was very much worse? (eg, 'NAME is a convicted pedophile', with images of the person's face; where that allegation is totally false and malicious.)
That's pretty close to the Bettina Wulff case[1]. Yes, you want that down immediately, but I don't think that should change the procedure. Again, if you think of web search as "what's out on the web", it becomes just a statement of fact. I will grant that it gets pretty abstracted for people, especially in that case, which is more about search suggestions, and is instead "what are other people searching for when including these words?", but there's no indication of the actual source of the suggestions.
> EDIT: Looks like I'm mostly wrong about this particular case.
Can you be more specific? Nothing lept out at me. Was it that he hadn't gone after the sources of the story, just yahoo and google?
So it's not malicious people creating false stories that have no basis; and the "link" between him and crime isn't something accidentally falling out of Google algorithms. Someone put it in print; a website covered it; Google indexed it; I think the guy then got the newspaper to take their page down, and got the site to take their page down, and then made a mistake when he asked Google to remove their pages?
How can anyone call this defamation? They link to websites that make associations. Shouldn't he sue those websites instead?
He's just asking for it by angering the internet. I'm waiting for 4chan to google-bomb him now.
He fills in a form, but does so incorrectly.
IMO Google's notorious lack of customer support left them open here. Getting him and his lawyers in a room with a good translator and someone who can explain the situation and walk him through it may have avoided the court cost. This is cheaper than the $250,000 that Yahoo have paid him.
But then I have no idea how many people send valid (but malformed) requests to Google asking for tweaks to web-results. Maybe it's millions each year and there's not much they can do.
It's hard to tell from the linked article when the "now defunct" website became defunct, and why. Did it just close for normal reasons, or was it shut down because of legal action? Because if a website was closed for defamatory material, and Google still has a cache of it, and someone tries to get that cache removed (but botches the request) then really Google should try a bit harder.
Obviously my post contains a bunch of guessing, and Google is unlikely to release information about this, so I'm happy to accept that perhaps I'm wrong.
I think technical companies should realise that sometimes unclueful people will need to interact with them, and those people will not be able to use the provided forms and will not be able to use the correct jargon but it is still in the company's best interest to listen to, and understand, those people so as to prevent court action.
You avoid court action because it's slow and expensive and because it is unpredictable. (Although, since he'd already won a case, it's not that unpredictable.)
What should this guy have done? He's tried to jump through the unnecessary hoops, and it didn't work. Why should he "suffer"[1] while the multi-billion dollar company makes money off "associating his name with criminality"[2]? (Please note careful use of scare quotes.)
[1] for various values of suffer, including not something that's probably not too severe for most people
[2] assuming they had ads on the search pages with the relevant results; and I know the association (if any) is caused by the creators of the original website.
The search engine reports on what other sites say about people. They are not generating new content -- they consolidate results that are a map of reality. Silencing them, does not change the fact that the other sites have that content. Google is reporting true facts in its search engine: this site says X about Y. How is that not a true statement of fact? Truth should be (morally not legally) a defense here.
This is where libel laws in these ridiculous venues goes wrong.
Rather than continue to struggle with a faceless corporation he just gave up and went to law.
Now the clown and his lawyers are capitalizing on that judgement to collect another check.
If you have a point to make, I'm sure you can make it without name calling.
From the article, they already have some sort of process in place to handle that. Out of curiosity, anyone know where that is?
(http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...)
He should have nothing to complain about, since it's not a right for someone to be found in a search.
British and Irish newspapers have lost defamation cases even though their claims were proven true. Unfortunately, Commonwealth defamation law does not concern itself with the truth of statements--the effect on reputation is what matters.
Edit: Changed UK to Commonwealth, as Australia is a Commonwealth nation but not a UK member.
Google would have handily won this case long before trial in the U.S., but this case did not take place in the U.S. It took place in a different country, where the laws allow plaintiffs to prevail in these sorts of situations. If you have a problem with that, become an Australian voter/legislator and lobby for the laws to be changed.
It's not accurate for Australia. Truth is a defense here.