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I'll go ahead and say that I feel bad for him, but he's still wrong. He shouldn't have the right to have it taken down, but it does get into the interesting are

I'll go ahead and say that I feel bad for him, but he's still wrong. He shouldn't have the right to have it taken down, but it does get into the interesting area of how "free speech" is defined around the world. In theory, Google (web search) just helps you find what other people are talking about. "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.

DanBC 14y ago
> The procedure should be to get the offending site to take down the content and then have Google remove it from its cache 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-results-in-defamation-case/ http://ozsoapbox.com/melbourne/yahoo-held-liable-for-search-...)
- magicalist 14y ago
  > 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? 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&answer=9109 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? [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19542938 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19542938
  - DanBC 14y ago
    The BBC article makes it seem like he's unrelated to any criminals, and was a victim of a shooting. It seems that he was the victim of a shooting, but that he was associated with a criminal, and a newspaper reported that when they reported the shooting, and a website covered that report. 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?

DanBC 14y ago

> The procedure should be to get the offending site to take down the content and then have Google remove it from its cache 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-results-in-defamation-case/ http://ozsoapbox.com/melbourne/yahoo-held-liable-for-search-...)

magicalist 14y ago
> 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? 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&answer=9109 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? [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19542938 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19542938
- DanBC 14y ago
  The BBC article makes it seem like he's unrelated to any criminals, and was a victim of a shooting. It seems that he was the victim of a shooting, but that he was associated with a criminal, and a newspaper reported that when they reported the shooting, and a website covered that report. 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?