Guy Sues Google Because His Past Lawsuits Show Up In Google Results
from the yeah,-that'll-work dept
Eric Goldman points us to a pro se case filed by a guy, Paul Hynard, who is apparently quite upset that searches on his name point to previous lawsuits that he was involved in that he doesn't want public. Of course, as with many pro se lawsuits, many of the concepts in the filing (embedded below) are a bit on the nutty side. However, as Goldman notes, this is the sort of thing that will become a lot more common if Europeans succeed in passing laws that grant a right to be forgotten. Do we really want to be dealing with regular lawsuits like this?
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Retarded?
I don't think he chose pro se; I think every lawyer he saw about this case escorted him to the door; probably with a certain amount of haste.
CBMHB
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Re: Retarded?
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Re: Retarded?
What I can't figure out is how he got Montaintuer out of Mountainview, where Google has its headquarters.
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Treasure trove of brilliance
He doesn't want Google pointing to his other lawsuits... How about his address that's on the filing? Let's all go to 140 Ravine Ane, 3A, Yonkers, NY, 10701 for a lawsuit party!
I love how he differentiates between "google" and "Google, Inc.".
ChimpBush McHitlerBurton is right: that's some horrible writing. But part 3a really takes the cake!
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Treasure trove of brilliance
He doesn't want Google pointing to his other lawsuits... How about his address that's on the filing? Let's all go to 140 Ravine Ane, 3A, Yonkers, NY, 10701 for a lawsuit party!
I love how he differentiates between "google" and "Google, Inc.".
ChimpBush McHitlerBurton is right: that's some horrible writing. But part 3a really takes the cake!
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-did he also sue the people who actually made the records public and searchable (which would make more sense);
-did he also sue bing, yahoo, dogpile and every other search engine?
Because his other suits were easily found on those other search engines too.
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Where oh where do you start
Public records and publically documents? No clue.
Search engines? Sorry, what are they again?
Websites? They're things you get your porn from right?
Seriously, I do hope the judge has some modicum of common sense and laughs this out of court at the first possible opportunity.
And what will be generated from this case filing? Sing it with me now everyone (to the tune of the Mickey Mouse club theme)!
S-T-R
E-I-S
A-N-D effect
Streisand effect, Streisand effect...
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Lawsuit against Google
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Google and You
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Every aspect of a lawsuit should be public
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1. People who have nothing embarrassing in their lives at all.
2. The other 99.999% of the human race.
The "right to be forgotten" isn't some frilly little thing overly delicate people are whining about. It really is the sort of thing that the absence of will make life impossible.
Consider a simple thing like getting arrested because you hadn't paid a parking ticket. Maybe you never knew you had a parking ticket. (Someone borrowed the car, got the ticket, meant to pay it, never did, and now you're in the back of the cruiser going downtown.)
Doesn't matter. Some hyper-anal HR department, thanks to the Internet, is able to go all the way back to the womb on you. And because the lawyers and accountants run everything, that ticket is exactly what is needed. "We'd like to hire you, but you have an arrest record. We can't take a risk with someone unstable."
"What? You're not offering me the job just because of an arrest?"
"That's right. Of course, we'll never admit that. We'll just say you weren't a good fit."
Do you really think all the millions of people who have one tiny imperfection in their entire Internet-accessible lives are just going to fade away? Nope. They'll become drains on society. If jobs become unavailable due to things you did/wrote/said 10, 20, or 30 years ago, we're going to end up with an unemployment rate of about 60%.
Strike out all the personal information on the Internet. Leave the porn, games, etc., but let John Smith12345 live down the one angry e-mail he posted 12 years ago.
None of this information is out there for some sort of "information should be free" reason. It's all out there because the Internet has become the largest database of customer behaviors and habits ever. Look at Facebook. How hard is it to figure out that it's a marketer's wetdream. People pump billions of pieces of information into it about all sorts of things. And they do it for FREE! To get market research that fine-grain would have cost trillions of dollars.
But people do it for free because it's fun. Wait until more people start knowing people who are unable to work because a single blog post, a single e-mail, a single photo made it into the wrong hands.
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To quote Syndrome, "And when everyone's super... [chuckles evilly] - no one will be."
Likewise, as "everyone" eventually posts something someone else will disagree with, it ceases to be an issue.
Take a look at tattoos among the US population. In my short lifetime they've moved from "only thugs get them" to your stockbroker having tattoo sleeves down both arms and your favorite lawyer having her kid's pictures on her shoulder.
Realistically, any potential employer who does a background search that includes looking over - and considering important - my internet history from a decade or more, or asking for me to "friend" them on Facebook is an employer I'm not going to be working for anyway. To me it smacks of an employer with serious lack of boundaries and thinks they get a gateway into my personal life.
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The gap between "everyone has it" and "no one cares anymore" in corporate America is about 20 years, especially for entry-level positions. You honestly think when someone sits down with a lip-plate or a bunch of piercings going through their face and all the way up an ear that they're not at a disadvantage? It's like saying fat people aren't at a disadvantage (even though every study shows that fat people are still -- WRONGLY -- considered to be dumb and lazy). The population is getting fatter every year, and has been for decades. But we still see a thin-centric society, don't we? The notion that "no one will care" in 20 years is based on nothing other than wishful thinking. And I think a lot of the 20-year-olds right now have already rendered themselves unemployable.
And yes, you may not want to work for someone so arbitrarily cruel that they'll hold that one e-mail or one facebook comment against you, but when you're looking for a job, and it's been six weeks, then six months, then a year, you'll take a job with ANYONE.
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This entire topic.
If you're truly upset by this, here's a thought: Bin Laden's "mansion" is Jockstrap-o-stan is probably available now. Go ahead, disappear yourself.
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