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I once got contacted by a female account manager from a well known job boards company in the Valley. I googled for her to find her linkedin so we could link up,
by BadassFractal 9y ago
I once got contacted by a female account manager from a well known job boards company in the Valley. I googled for her to find her linkedin so we could link up, since we were going to be doing business together, likely for a while.
What shocked me was that the first result that Google returned was a smear page against her from her ex boyfriend, something like janedoesisaslut.com or janedoecheats.com with a long essay about what she did, and a bunch of photos of her on it. It was about how, when they were together in college, allegedly the woman had slept with other guys, and the boyfriend got pretty upset about it.
It was mortifying for me to run into it, and I can't even imagine how she must feel when the n.1 Google result for her name is that, forever. This must have happened over 10 years ago, and yet it kept haunting her to that day.
I talked about this with a few lawyer friends and my understanding is that you can't actually be sued for it. Apparently, if you're not lying and just stating actual facts about what happened, you're not liable, and don't fall under defamation/libel category. You could start a JohnDoeWillGiveYouGonorrhea.com and that's totally legal. The person trying to take the site down would have to clearly prove that their lives were seriously impacted by its existence, and quantify the damages, which would be pretty hard to pull off.
Real odd legal corner case.
- danso 9y agoI wonder how this would be treated under the EU law? It doesn't involve a legal conviction or something that has a codified statute of limitations. It may contain facts, but it also contains opinions, opinions which the site creator may still hold.
- krageon 9y agoThe way it would be treated is the domain would be taken down (if that were requested by the victim). I'm not sure if that is EU law or something local. I am fairly certain a lot of EU countries have local provisions that effectively mean the same.