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https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/duffy-v-google-inc/ https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/duffy-v... has some actual details

https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/duffy-v-google-inc/ https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/duffy-v... has some actual details of what this is about.

Popeyes 3y ago
Crazy story, so she shit-posted on a dubious forum, they shit-posted back and then she sued Google for defamation.
- aardvarkr 3y ago
  That’s my take too. It’s pretty ludicrous
  - nullifidian 3y ago
    That's UK/Australian legal/cultural norms for you.
  - Retric 3y ago
    So as is often the case the details are what matter. Google failed to remove defamatory content from their systems after being informed it was defamatory. That’s the case, and they lost because it’s their responsibility to respect such notifications. It’s like that hot coffee lawsuit. They were held 80% liable because the coffee was served at a seriously unsafe temperature, which isn’t total liability. She got 3rd degree burns on 6 percent of her skin and lesser burns over 16 percent, spent 8 days in the hospital and needed skin grafts. But everyone seems to think coffee = hot and not that dangerous when ignoring the possibility it can be made more dangerous.
    - fastball 3y ago
      I think the thing people are surprised by is that auto-complete searches count as defamation, not that Google didn't take them down.
      - Retric 3y ago
        A distinction is this wasn’t automated once a human looked at the complaint.
    - anon84873628 3y ago
      >In dismissing the innocent dissemination defense, which required that the publisher be a subordinate distributor who did not know or ought not to have known that the matter was defamatory, the Court stated that the defamatory nature of the content was self-evident from an examination of it. It's not like the plaintiff went to Google with a prior legal judgment against the RipOff website telling Google to take it down. Apparently the court expects Google to remove (within one month) "self-evident" defamatory content if alerted to it. That's a pretty interesting precedent to set. What makes defamation"self-evident"?
      - caf 3y ago
        Primary publishers have to make that judgement all the time. If you get a book published by Harper Collins they're not going to let you put "anything not specifically already ruled defamation by a court" in it.
adriand 3y ago
This is an interesting detail - Google's autocomplete suggestions for the plaintiff's name were found to be defamatory: > Dr. Duffy became aware that when people searched her name on Google’s search engine, the Google search bar provided an autocomplete suggested search term of “janice duffy psychic stalker”. [...] Google was also found [by the court] to be the “publisher” of autocomplete suggestions that came up when a user began to type the individual’s name in its search bar Be careful with your UI!
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  It's not so much "be careful with your UI" as "when you're actually notified that your UI is treading on somebody, you better stop (treading on that particular person)".
  - code51 3y ago
    But how can you notify Google of anything? Even when you report an important bug, bots and "product experts" just shrug it off. The only "notification" for Google is a lawsuit it seems.
    - krisoft 3y ago
      > But how can you notify Google of anything? Same way you notify any other company about anything. Registered letter sent to the corporate headquaters.
      - KomoD 3y ago
        Have you tried that with Google? Or are you just guessing?
        Retric 3y ago
        Legally it counts as notification even if they never open the letter.
csunbird 3y ago
> Dr. Duffy posted a web report on the website “Ripoff Report” complaining about her dissatisfaction with the services she had received from the psychics on the Kasamba site. She also commented on the reports of others about the psychics. She created a chat group “kasambavictims” on Yahoo. Dr. Duffy also posted messages under a pseudonym, and began to email the site complaining that her friend’s wife had committed suicide due to bad advice given by the psychics. This was untrue. Very interesting part. Later in the article: > In relation to justification (truth), the Court found no evidence supporting Google’s argument that Dr. Duffy stalked or persistently and obsessively harassed any of the psychics. Am I missing something important here? Dr. Duffy clearly defamed a business with a lie, and some other people (other site users) pointed this up, in a very cruel way, to her in a forum with user submitted content. Then Dr. Duffy sues Google instead of the Ripoff Report forum?
- kikokikokiko 3y ago
  I find it amusing that I feel no empathy at all to ANYONE involved in this case. The "psychics" are just low-life scammers that prey on the stupid/mentally ill, and things like this case are bound to happen to them from time to time. Google is Google, everything that makes the evil tech lords suffer a little bit is a plus for mankind. And this woman seems to be just an insufferable crazy cat lady, so good riddance to all involved. It's a win-win-win for humanity.
  - DrJaniceDuffy 3y ago
    I'd rather be 'an insufferable cat lady' who stands up for her rights than an asshole - lol!
- xyst 3y ago
  Whether the plaintiff defamed another business or not is not the subject of this case. The case is about Google continuing to publish defamatory statements generated from “Rip off Reports” content despite being forced to comply with the request in 2011. Now I do agree the plaintiff can also be sued for damages by the psychic company for defamation. That’s my take on this. I do agree the premise of the case is odd. The in depth case review doesn’t seem to mention if she actually went through the process of having the primary publisher (Rip-off reports) remove the defamatory information.
anon84873628 3y ago
The most interesting sequence of the decision to me: >The Court reasoned that only once Google acquired knowledge of the paragraphs by reason of Dr Duffy’s notifications and failed to remove them within a reasonable time thereafter would the necessary mental element be present for Google to be a “secondary publisher”. > ... >The Court then turned to look at the notice given by Dr. Duffy, to ascertain whether it was sufficient to fix Google with the relevant mental element. The Court concluded that Dr Duffy’s communications with Google comprised adequate notification to them of the allegedly defamatory material, this was despite the fact that some of the URLs were incomplete in these communications. The Court also implied that a reasonable time for removal of content would be one month, which had not been met by Google. >... >The Court rejected Google’s defenses of innocent dissemination, qualified privilege, and justification (truth). In dismissing the innocent dissemination defense, which required that the publisher be a subordinate distributor who did not know or ought not to have known that the matter was defamatory, the Court stated that the defamatory nature of the content was self-evident from an examination of it. Emphasis on the last line. It's not like she had to go to Google and say, "here is a court judgment showing this content is defaming me" to have it removed. She simply had to notify Google that this "self-evident" defamatory content was being served by them. That seems like a significant precedent to set. I don't really think it is fair to expect Google to determine which content is "self-evidently" defamatory (edit to add: amongst all the takedown requests they will receive)
- TimPC 3y ago
  I think it's a fair precedent. If Google feels the content is not defamatory they can take that position in court with consequences if they are wrong. The downside is this ends up like the DMCA where companies are likely to take down all content complained about because of the risk/reward tradeoffs but if we already do that for alleged copyright violations doing it for alleged defamation seems much more reasonable to me. They also don't have to remove all self-evidently defamatory content, just all self-evidently defamatory content they are notified they are serving.
- chaostheory 3y ago
  This will continue the trend for more censorship in search.

https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/duffy-v-google-inc/ https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/duffy-v... has some actual details of what this is about.

Popeyes 3y ago

Crazy story, so she shit-posted on a dubious forum, they shit-posted back and then she sued Google for defamation.

aardvarkr 3y ago
That’s my take too. It’s pretty ludicrous
- nullifidian 3y ago
  That's UK/Australian legal/cultural norms for you.
- Retric 3y ago
  So as is often the case the details are what matter. Google failed to remove defamatory content from their systems after being informed it was defamatory. That’s the case, and they lost because it’s their responsibility to respect such notifications. It’s like that hot coffee lawsuit. They were held 80% liable because the coffee was served at a seriously unsafe temperature, which isn’t total liability. She got 3rd degree burns on 6 percent of her skin and lesser burns over 16 percent, spent 8 days in the hospital and needed skin grafts. But everyone seems to think coffee = hot and not that dangerous when ignoring the possibility it can be made more dangerous.
  - fastball 3y ago
    I think the thing people are surprised by is that auto-complete searches count as defamation, not that Google didn't take them down.
    - Retric 3y ago
      A distinction is this wasn’t automated once a human looked at the complaint.
  - anon84873628 3y ago
    >In dismissing the innocent dissemination defense, which required that the publisher be a subordinate distributor who did not know or ought not to have known that the matter was defamatory, the Court stated that the defamatory nature of the content was self-evident from an examination of it. It's not like the plaintiff went to Google with a prior legal judgment against the RipOff website telling Google to take it down. Apparently the court expects Google to remove (within one month) "self-evident" defamatory content if alerted to it. That's a pretty interesting precedent to set. What makes defamation"self-evident"?
    - caf 3y ago
      Primary publishers have to make that judgement all the time. If you get a book published by Harper Collins they're not going to let you put "anything not specifically already ruled defamation by a court" in it.

adriand 3y ago

This is an interesting detail - Google's autocomplete suggestions for the plaintiff's name were found to be defamatory: > Dr. Duffy became aware that when people searched her name on Google’s search engine, the Google search bar provided an autocomplete suggested search term of “janice duffy psychic stalker”. [...] Google was also found [by the court] to be the “publisher” of autocomplete suggestions that came up when a user began to type the individual’s name in its search bar Be careful with your UI!

unsupp0rted 3y ago
It's not so much "be careful with your UI" as "when you're actually notified that your UI is treading on somebody, you better stop (treading on that particular person)".
- code51 3y ago
  But how can you notify Google of anything? Even when you report an important bug, bots and "product experts" just shrug it off. The only "notification" for Google is a lawsuit it seems.
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > But how can you notify Google of anything? Same way you notify any other company about anything. Registered letter sent to the corporate headquaters.
    - KomoD 3y ago
      Have you tried that with Google? Or are you just guessing?
      - Retric 3y ago
        Legally it counts as notification even if they never open the letter.

csunbird 3y ago

> Dr. Duffy posted a web report on the website “Ripoff Report” complaining about her dissatisfaction with the services she had received from the psychics on the Kasamba site. She also commented on the reports of others about the psychics. She created a chat group “kasambavictims” on Yahoo. Dr. Duffy also posted messages under a pseudonym, and began to email the site complaining that her friend’s wife had committed suicide due to bad advice given by the psychics. This was untrue. Very interesting part. Later in the article: > In relation to justification (truth), the Court found no evidence supporting Google’s argument that Dr. Duffy stalked or persistently and obsessively harassed any of the psychics. Am I missing something important here? Dr. Duffy clearly defamed a business with a lie, and some other people (other site users) pointed this up, in a very cruel way, to her in a forum with user submitted content. Then Dr. Duffy sues Google instead of the Ripoff Report forum?

kikokikokiko 3y ago
I find it amusing that I feel no empathy at all to ANYONE involved in this case. The "psychics" are just low-life scammers that prey on the stupid/mentally ill, and things like this case are bound to happen to them from time to time. Google is Google, everything that makes the evil tech lords suffer a little bit is a plus for mankind. And this woman seems to be just an insufferable crazy cat lady, so good riddance to all involved. It's a win-win-win for humanity.
- DrJaniceDuffy 3y ago
  I'd rather be 'an insufferable cat lady' who stands up for her rights than an asshole - lol!
xyst 3y ago
Whether the plaintiff defamed another business or not is not the subject of this case. The case is about Google continuing to publish defamatory statements generated from “Rip off Reports” content despite being forced to comply with the request in 2011. Now I do agree the plaintiff can also be sued for damages by the psychic company for defamation. That’s my take on this. I do agree the premise of the case is odd. The in depth case review doesn’t seem to mention if she actually went through the process of having the primary publisher (Rip-off reports) remove the defamatory information.

anon84873628 3y ago

The most interesting sequence of the decision to me: >The Court reasoned that only once Google acquired knowledge of the paragraphs by reason of Dr Duffy’s notifications and failed to remove them within a reasonable time thereafter would the necessary mental element be present for Google to be a “secondary publisher”. > ... >The Court then turned to look at the notice given by Dr. Duffy, to ascertain whether it was sufficient to fix Google with the relevant mental element. The Court concluded that Dr Duffy’s communications with Google comprised adequate notification to them of the allegedly defamatory material, this was despite the fact that some of the URLs were incomplete in these communications. The Court also implied that a reasonable time for removal of content would be one month, which had not been met by Google. >... >The Court rejected Google’s defenses of innocent dissemination, qualified privilege, and justification (truth). In dismissing the innocent dissemination defense, which required that the publisher be a subordinate distributor who did not know or ought not to have known that the matter was defamatory, the Court stated that the defamatory nature of the content was self-evident from an examination of it. Emphasis on the last line. It's not like she had to go to Google and say, "here is a court judgment showing this content is defaming me" to have it removed. She simply had to notify Google that this "self-evident" defamatory content was being served by them. That seems like a significant precedent to set. I don't really think it is fair to expect Google to determine which content is "self-evidently" defamatory (edit to add: amongst all the takedown requests they will receive)

TimPC 3y ago
I think it's a fair precedent. If Google feels the content is not defamatory they can take that position in court with consequences if they are wrong. The downside is this ends up like the DMCA where companies are likely to take down all content complained about because of the risk/reward tradeoffs but if we already do that for alleged copyright violations doing it for alleged defamation seems much more reasonable to me. They also don't have to remove all self-evidently defamatory content, just all self-evidently defamatory content they are notified they are serving.
chaostheory 3y ago
This will continue the trend for more censorship in search.