Appeals Court Rejects Silly Case Against Google Over Search Results Summary

from the its-own-form-of-self-help dept

The Sixth Circuit appeals court easily upheld a lower court ruling dismissing a ridiculous lawsuit against Google and others last week. The lawsuit was filed by a guy named Colin O'Kroley, and the summary in the ruling explains the situation pretty well:
Colin O’Kroley googled himself and did not like the results. “Texas Advance Sheet,” an entry read, followed by the words “indecency with a child in Trial Court Cause N . . . Colin O’Kroley v Pringle.” ... Truth be told, O’Kroley was never involved in a case about indecency with a child. What had happened was that his case, O’Kroley v. Pringle, was listed immediately after another case, a child-indecency case, on the Texas Advance Sheet, a service that summarizes Texas judicial opinions. If users clicked the Google link they would have seen how the Texas Advance Sheet works and would have seen that the two cases had no relation. But if they did not click the link and stayed on Google, they would see only the name of his case and the description of the other case separated by an ellipsis.

Claiming “severe mental anguish” from the listing, O’Kroley sued Google (and a number of other entities) for $19,200,000,000,000 (that’s trillion), on causes of action ranging from “libel” to “invasion of privacy,” from “failure to provide due process” to “cruel and unusual punishment,” from “cyber-bullying” to “psychological torture.”
The court is not impressed. The case against Google is rejected in large part because Section 230 of the CDA clearly protects Google. And this was true even though O'Kroley also asked the court to throw out CDA 230 "as a simple matter of logic." That's not how all this works. The other defendants got out even easier, seeing as O'Kroley apparently never served them. In fact, the court finds most of O'Kroley's legal arguments to be a waste of time, including trying to add Georgetown University as a defendant after a law school class said it planned to teach this case.
O’Kroley raises several other points on appeal, ranging from the meritless to the frivolous. On the meritless side: He “requests a court appointed attorney,” ..., but he has not shown the “exceptional circumstances” needed to appoint one.... On the frivolous side: He asks us to strike down the Communications Decency Act (“as a simple matter of logic”); he claims violations of the Eighteenth Amendment (the former prohibition on alcohol repealed long before the Internet came into being); he asks us to add Georgetown University as a defendant (because it might be using this case in its “Robots and Law” class); and he contends the judges below were “biased” against him (because “[t]hey may be ignorant about the English language”).... To restate some claims is to reject them.
But, as Judge Jeffrey Sutton wryly notes at the end of the opinion, all is not lost for O'Kroley. Thanks to this lawsuit, the search result that caused him so much anguish has been pushed down the listings in favor of stories about this stupid lawsuit.
In most respects, O’Kroley didn’t accomplish much in suing Google and the other defendants. He didn’t win. He didn’t collect a dime. And the search result about “indecency with a child” remains publicly available. All is not lost, however. Since filing the case, Google users searching for “Colin O’Kroley” no longer see the objectionable search result at the top of the list. Now the top hits all involve this case (there is even a Wikipedia entry on it). So: Even assuming two premises of this lawsuit are true—that there are Internet users other than Colin O’Kroley searching “Colin O’Kroley” and that they look only at the Google previews rather than clicking on and exploring the links—it’s not likely that anyone will ever see the offending listing at the root of this lawsuit. Each age has its own form of self-help.
Each age has its own form of self-help, indeed.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: cda 230, colin o'kroley, search results, search summaries, section 230
Companies: google


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    bob, 25 Jul 2016 @ 5:34pm

    a new anti-SEO business is born.

    I wonder how much he charges by the hour to help people hide information about themselves from Google's search results.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2016 @ 5:41pm

    The court ruled in favor of Google involving ridiculously specific search terms?

    Whatever's not going to like this.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2016 @ 5:57pm

    This is a disaster!

    It's well-known (by everyone except apparently this Luddite court) that any ruling in favor of Google--on any grounds whatsoever--scrapes the jam from the bleeding lips of the poor musicians, because Google's entire business model--including the Google campus cafeteria lunch menu--is based solely on inducing copyright infringement of incoherent ephemeral commercial music.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2016 @ 6:55pm

      Re:

      Look everyone a new troll has discovered TechDirt!!

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2016 @ 7:27pm

        Re: Re:

        You should probably read the comment again, slowly.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2016 @ 8:31pm

          Re: Re: Re:

          No, he/she should read the comment again VERY slowly and have a English dictionary open beside him/her.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2016 @ 8:41pm

      Re:

      Pretty accurate, though note the incorrect usage of Luddite. "Luddite" is not a word used by copyright fans to describe their opponents. Try "pirate court" instead.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        John Fenderson (profile), 25 Jul 2016 @ 9:34pm

        Re: Re:

        Almost nobody uses "Luddite" correctly anyway, so it typically has no more meaning than just calling someone "bastard" or something.

        The historical Luddites were not anti-technology. They were reacting to a particular use of particular technology that they viewed as threatening their livelihoods.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    orbitalinsertion (profile), 25 Jul 2016 @ 6:45pm

    Sometimes, or maybe most of the time - i don't pay attention because - those results summaries suck. And so does search, often enough to notice. (No matter how i modify operators.) But LOL dude. Dude. Duuuuude.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2016 @ 7:26pm

    You win!

    Mission accomplished! Good job, (dumb-a..) sir!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Padpaw (profile), 25 Jul 2016 @ 9:48pm

    if i had a say i would pick sterilization as part of his punishment.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    DocGerbil100 (profile), 25 Jul 2016 @ 10:10pm

    One hundred idiots make idiotic plans and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot, whose plan succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he is a genius.
    -- Iain M. Banks, Matter.

    If there's ever a 'citation needed' for the above quote, this story is it.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    David, 26 Jul 2016 @ 2:26am

    He should talk...

    When I was young and pretty, I created an Emacs WYSIWYG add-on for the LaTeX text processor called "Preview-LaTeX". When I first vanity-googled it, I was rudely reminded of Google ignoring case (these days, the project has changed its name to all-lowercase anyway) and using "-" merely to indicate juxtaposition. Man, what a vanity suit this could have been.

    These days, the reminders of an imprudent name choice are way way down the list. And I doubt that it is because of Google being afraid of getting sued.

    Basically, I did an O'Kroley: be relevant enough that competing unsavory links are just pushed far enough down the list to not matter.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    TechDescartes (profile), 26 Jul 2016 @ 6:27am

    Not A Recommended Tactic, But Nevertheless

    Even assuming two premises of this lawsuit are true—that there are Internet users other than Colin O’Kroley searching “Colin O’Kroley” and that they look only at the Google previews rather than clicking on and exploring the links—it’s not likely that anyone will ever see the offending listing at the root of this lawsuit. Each age has its own form of self-help.
    So is this the O'Kroley Exception to the Streisand Effect?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Wendy Cockcroft, 26 Jul 2016 @ 7:38am

      Re: Not A Recommended Tactic, But Nevertheless

      The O'Kroley Effect: the unexpected bonus of viral publicity burying unwanted search results. Many people pay good money for this and get nowhere but O'Kroley gets it for free by making a fool of himself in court. Hey, whatever gets the job done, right?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Annonymouse, 26 Jul 2016 @ 8:20am

    Two words in the same statement that I rarely see together. Free and court.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    metalliqaz (profile), 26 Jul 2016 @ 9:02am

    Crazy is as crazy does

    Based on his filings with the court, I'm sure we'll be seeing this name in the headlines again when he finally cracks and starts shooting people.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous, 26 Jul 2016 @ 9:37am

    Re:

    and Google will be counter suing for a "Jillion" dollars - in cash!!!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    crade (profile), 26 Jul 2016 @ 2:03pm

    Don't be discouraged, you can try again after Trump "opens up" libel laws!

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.