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CPA Googles For His Name, Sues Google For Libel
fbform writes "Mark Maughan, an accountant, searched Google for his name on March 25 2003 and found some 'alarming, false, misleading and injurious' information about himself and his firm. Therefore, he is now suing Google, Yahoo (which used Google as its search engine at the time), AOL (for using Google to enhance its search results) and Time Warner (because they're the same company as AOL) for libel. Specifically, his lawyer John Girardi believes that Google's PageRank algorithm takes known good information and twists its context when displaying search results."
Googling for "litigious schmuck" now turns up a new entry...
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
...how much of it was true? ;)
Google's PageRank algorithm takes known good information and twists its context
Yeah it isn't like lawyers to do that is it?
Hey everybody, I heard that Mark Maughan once killed a man in Reno just to watch him die!
He also has poor math skills and failed basic algebra twice.
I called several of my business' competitors, and asked them for their opinion on my company, and they said they were better! This is outrageous!
... is censorship, because if they delete him from Google nobody can find him.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
He just wants some free publicity. Seriously, this will be good for his business.
Tort reform, anyone?
Last i checked Libel required some form of intent since google's results are computer generrated by the web spiders where the intent do the spiders have it out for him?
If this guy gets any money.... actually, if this guy gets any money, it will only continue the current legal trends.
However, I was going to say that if this guy gets any money our legal system will have gone kaput. This is like suing a library for providing books which contain recommendations against your products. It's also like suing me for giving you a book with the same information.
What a great example of shooting the messenger... how pathetically ridiculous.
Oh, and is this guy actually suing the parties responsible for the creation of the socalled 'defamatory content'? Probably not, seeing as how they are broke due to doing business with a poor accountant.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Have fun tilting at that windmill, bub.
Wonder if this will add strength to his case?
Anyway, here's what I was going to post... Can this CPA add up 2 and 2? If there is libelous information on the Internet, and he wishes to pursue litigation, then he should go after the persons responsible for the information. Google is only an index, making the information on the Internet easily available for access. Without Google (and perhaps without similar search engines), it would be all but impossible to find anything useful on the Internet.
In fact, I think the aforementioned CPA should THANK Google for making it possible for him to FIND the offending information, so that he can take action against whomever he should take action. Without Google, the alleged libel might have been posted all over the Internet and our friend the CPA would never have been any the wiser.
I further think there is no basis in law for suing an index for pointing to information. On the contrary, I think this was tested in court quite a few times (in all those trials against linking to pages within a site) and it was decided that you can link to whatever the heck you want to link to.
Therefore, I think this CPA is making a stupid decision, and I believe the case will get dismissed. I hope Google countersues for legal fees. And wins.
Oh yeah, and did I mention I'm a Supreme Court Justice? Yeah, the Supreme Court of Bullshit.
So in other words he is suing Google, et al. for pointing to publicly available records that are not flattering. The odd side effect is now that everyone will see this link and know all the sorted details about he and his law firm. Before he made this fuss no one would have cared. Maybe he will sue me too for posting this link. Hmm. . . .
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
This page seems to list some disciplinary action taken against his law firm. I quote from the "Cause for Discipline" column (all emphasis mine):
For purposes of settlement, Respondent admits the truth and accuracy of the allegations and charges in the Accusation. Respondent and his accountancy corporation engaged in the practice of public accounting with expired licenses.
Respondent additionally failed to pay an administrative fine imposed by the Board for failing to supply the Board with copies of a financial report representing the highest level of service rendered, in accordance with Section 89.1 of the California Code of Regulations. Respondent's failure to pay the administrative fine caused the Board to withhold renewal of his CPA license.
Sounds like someone knew they'd have no luck taking on the state and decided to try and get some quick cash out a Google. Nice try.
Don't laugh. I did.
I requested, was charged for and I paid for an unlisted number. The phone company published my number anyway and I filed suit on them in small claims court. The phone company did not show up in court and I won a default judgement against them for $1,000.
They never paid me. And when I called them and demanded satisfaction, they began screwing me on my phone bills. My $29 a month phone bill suddenly exploded into $600 a month bills for bogus charges, bogus equipment, bogus repairs, bogus services and bogus installations. The more I complained the worse it got, when I refused to pay the bills they cut my phone off then charged me hundreds of dollars to reconnect it and HUGE deposits.
Fucking thieves SBC is.... I cut the wires at the pole and the house and rolled up the wire and kept it. I now use only a cell phone.
I will NEVER have a land line again.
BTW, I had previously had an unlisted number for over 15 years.
I think it may be time for the US to seriously consider implementing a "Loser Pays" system in civil court. Basically, if you, as a lawyer, pursue what is found to be suit with insufficient legal merit, then you are liable for all the costs of the case, including the other sides fees, plus any penalty the court finds suitable.
If you as a lawyer don't believe that a case has merit, but the client wants to pursue the case, the lawyer can draw up a contract noting that the client has been advised that consuel believes the case does not have merit, and that they, the client, will bear the liability for all costs and penalties in the case.
The first thing that happens in a civil suit is that it is analyzed for merit, and if it found lacking, liability and fines are assessed.
Basically, it takes the profit motive for pursuing crappy cases out of the system. Why shouldn't lawyers pursue any case? Money is money.
And this still allows for anybody to pursue a case, but they have to assume the costs if the lawyer doesn't find any merit to the case.
The reason he is suing is because "Surrender of license accepted." is shown in the description, while it actually is carried over from a section on the page which doesn't refer to his company. Though if you view the page you'll see that the company is actually on probation for 3 years. The site linked to is actually http://www.dca.ca.gov. Now, apparently, this guy thinks that if Google sampled some of the results on the page, and accidentally showed that, Google is somehow responsible for libel.
Personally, I think he's insane, but I can see his position on this because it does look misleading. I just hope he doesn't win anything.
Googling for my name reveals that, in addition to being an avid gamer, I apparantly played Greedo in Star Wars.
Think I'll sue Lucas for not paying me.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
I kinda agree... between this guy, SCO, Microsoft, and everyone else these days, it seems like childish behavior in the courtroom is the order of the day.
Of course, sometimes I wonder if it's always been like this. The internet I think is bringing things into the sunlight that are normally hidden in darkness....
Maybe this publicity is having a positive effect. Few of the grown-ups I know approve of childish behavior, so stories on people like this ought to show the public their true faces: adults acting like spoiled rotten kids.
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
You mean this technology I presume...
DrkBr
When google gives wrong info on me(other people have same name), i just add their stuff to my resume.
I gained a dance school and a few civil war books in my resume experiences.
It's only right that Google should validate the truth of every one of the six billion pages indexed by their system. After all, eager minds want to know:
Who really killed JFK, did Tammy really make out with Nick at the end of the high school prom, and whether UFO's, the Lock Ness Monster, bigfoot, black triangles and the chucacubra really exist or not. This could save so much effort and time wasted on speculation and controversy.
Let me begin by saying that I agree with you that lawsuits are out of control.
But...
The sort of reform you suggest is not fair. We all know that guilty (or in this case liable) parties are found not liable, and not liable parties are found liable. It happens, especially in law where the running joke that "a jury is twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer" isn't that far from the truth.
An unintended consequence of this reform is to limit completely LEGITIMATE lawsuits and make big corporations essentially untouchable for the average Joe Citizen. We all know that the bigger the corporation or the richer the party, the more lawyers they have and the more expensive each one is. Even if somebody has a legitimate claim against the corporation, are they going to take the chance of having to pay $150,000 if a jury doesn't agree? How about a half million? They would be especially wary about doing so if the amount they're claiming is less than the amount that they were likely to lose if their case was rejected.
On the other side of the coin, it permits companies and rich people from continuing to run rampant over the judicial system by simply accepting the risks or for intimidation purposes--one of the main purposes of lawsuits today. Tort reform that only reforms the lower- and middle-classes... there just has to be something better.
On a completely DIFFERENT coin, even if your idea was otherwise flawless there would still be a problem: Namely, that some unbelievable percentage of cases never even reach court. So if that number is 85% (I can't find a figure right now), that means you're only having an effect on the remaining 15% of lawsuits anyway. It would be a start, but hardly a big impact.
Personally, I think the problem is attitude. When people stop believing that everybody owes them something, that if any mistake is ever made they should sue the pants off of somebody, the lawsuit problem will cease to exist. But that attitude plays on human nature's inherent greed, so I'm not sure it ever will.
From what I read in the article, it's not PageRank that produced the libelous comments but the summary view of the linked-to pages.
... is a criminal"
Ie, when searching for the two words:
"Bloater" "criminal"
a page that rightly proclaims:
"Bloater thinks that any murderer is a criminal"
can be summarised as "Bloater
If this is the case, then just as a the author of an anagram generator does not issue libelous statements, but the "user" does, it is in fact Mark Maughan himself that generated these alleged libelous statements by instructing a peice of search_and_summarise software to search and summarise by cutting out non matching text using some continuation marker such as "..." just as it normally does and he and everybody else expects it to.
A librarian is a bad example, because Google doesn't even understand what a person is...it's just a pattern-matching algorithm. You make them sound like some kind of a malevolent agent that refuses to stop telling big mean 'ol nasty lies...the truth of the matter is that Google just scans for whatever words you put in it, and if someone is publishing information that contains those words, it's going to turn up.
Furthermore, there are so many people in the world with any given name there's no expectation that just giving google a name is enough to be sure you're going to be talking about the same person.
This is like looking in the card catalog for your name and then suing the library for libel.
Don't be so quick to knock ridiculous metaphors, you had a really ridiculous one and you didn't seem to understand what was going on at all.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Excuse me, but if you went through the trouble of going to court with this, why did you not take it all the way? I mean, you won $1000, why did you call THEM asking for satisfaction? Why not take further legal action? I'm sorry, but if a company owes me that kind of money, I'm going to get it.
The next part is even more unbelievable. As big as SBC is, I highly doubt that some low level bill supervisor cares about your lawsuit and complaints enough to perform highly illegal actions (of which you have written, documented proof in your bill). Even more ludicrous is that a high level manager would care about something so petty as $1000 to fuck with you. Then, even if this did happen, why did you not take those bills to the Better Business Bureau or to small claims court again?
All of this sounds like urban legend... even the $1000. I would guess that a judge would fine them the amount you paid to have your phone unlisted, then ordered them to take your name out of the next version of the phone book.
IANAL, but I play one on
He needs to take this up with the original posters of this information. You can sue someone for libeling you (hopefully if it's not true), but you can't sue Xerox for printing the copy.
Stupid fscking lawsuits. How about this - don't be an asshole and you'll have nothing to worry about to begin with - END OF LINE.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Honestly, if you can sue P2P "search engines" for finding music in which they ultimately do not control who downloads or not, why not sue a normal search engine for all the pirated material, warez and serialz? Why not sue them for libel since they're propagating false and slanderous information while you're at it?
It's always a riot to see hypocrisy and lawsuit abuse come head to head. What a wonderful standard the RIAA has set for us.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I think it's about time Slashdot had something along this line:
----- -----
Slashdot Men of Genius...
Today we salute you, mister "begs-the-question".
Mister begs-the-question!
While millions can understand a basic phrase, you take the lead in misinterpreting everything.
Cannot make a distinction!
Your lack of logic ensures that phrases coined centuries ago will continue to wreak confusion for years come.
A leader in confusion!
You know, your anal retentive obsession about "begs the question" really begs the question, do you really understand basic English?
This is the question I'm beggin'!
And gosh, did you know that I B.A'd in Logic? Fat lot of good that did me with guys like you around telling me how to speak.
Slashdot Men of Genius
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