Suing Google Because You Don't Like What It Links To

from the another-day,-another-bogus-Google-lawsuit dept

Google's lawyers certainly are kept busy these days, given all the questionable lawsuits that seem to keep showing up. We've already covered numerous examples of Google getting sued by people who don't like how certain sites are ranked -- including last week's story of a Chinese professor who is planning to sue Google (and Yahoo) to call attention to the fact that both search engines have removed all evidence of his existence from their search engines in China (after he called for a more democratic China). Reader Jon writes in to let us know of a slightly different lawsuit against Google. Rather than complaining about missing content, this one is about there being too much content found by Google. That is, two Australian real estate agents are suing Google for linking to an allegedly defamatory article about the agents.

Of course, even if the article is totally and completely defamatory, it's hard to see how Google has any liability whatsoever. If there's a defamatory article, then the liability is on whoever wrote it and put it online. The fact that Google found it in a search shouldn't transfer liability to them -- even if (as the agents indicate) Google was told that the content was defamatory. Google is merely a search engine and cannot be held liable for the content it links to. Hopefully this case gets thrown out of court rather quickly.

Filed Under: defamation, lawsuits, links, search engines
Companies: google

Why Is Business Week Telling People They Can't Link To Its Site?

from the you-got-me dept

We've been linking to Business Week's website for many, many years here on Techdirt. A quick search shows a long list of posts that all link to articles on the Business Week site. In fact, Business Week has hired a PR firm that has often sent us stories, requesting that we write posts to them. I actually found it rather amusing that a publication would have PR people to try to get more buzz about its own articles -- but those PR people were always friendly, and some of the links they sent were actually quite good. Yet, apparently, someone didn't make this clear to other folks at Business Week. Mathew Ingram points us to a post by SmugMug's CEO, who claims that Business Week demanded he take down a link to a story about his company, pointing to this user agreement that forbids deep-linking, among other things. In the past, we've seen other sites make such claims, though none have been shown to be legal. You simply can't forbid someone from linking to you, no matter how much you might wish to do so. It's rather surprising that a site like BusinessWeek.com would have such a policy in place (especially while actively seeking such links from others) and even more surprising that someone there would move to enforce such a policy. In the meantime, if they would prefer it, we can stop linking to Business Week.

Filed Under: deep linking, links, user agreements
Companies: business week

One Year After Google's AP Deal... And Nothing To Show For It (Other Than A Lack Of Lawsuits)

from the makes-you-wonder dept

We were just talking about how confused news organizations are with the fact that Google News gives them free traffic, but it's time to revisit one of the earlier disputes on this topic. In 2005 the Associated Press contacted Google to express their concern over Google News linking to AP content. This, of course, is ridiculous. There is absolutely nothing illegal about linking to content (or including a brief snippet of that content). However, with the AP making a lot of noise about this, last August Google signed a deal with AP, paying them an unknown amount of money to license AP content. This seemed strange -- and, in fact, Google insisted that the deal had absolutely nothing (nothing!) to do with the links to AP content on Google News. Rather, Google insisted, the deal was about some new product that would make use of licensed AP content. Well, some have noticed that an entire year has gone by and no such product has been revealed. It's looking more and more like Google simply paid the Associated Press off to prevent a lawsuit (and, possibly, to put pressure on Google News competitors to pay off news organizations as well). Perhaps Google really is working on a new product that will use AP content -- but in the meantime, it looks like it paid the AP for a year's worth of content it didn't need to pay for.

Filed Under: copyright, links
Companies: associated press, google