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Japanese Court Orders Google To Turn Off Auto-Complete Function
An anonymous reader writes with news that a Tokyo District Court has granted its approval to a petition seeking to force Google to turn off the auto-complete feature for its search engine. "The petition against Google was filed by a Japanese man who claims the feature breached his privacy and eventually led to the loss of his job. According to the man, whose name has been withheld, when his name is typed into the Google search engine auto-complete suggests words associated with criminal behavior. And when those suggested searches are clicked, over 10,000 results are shown that disparage or defame him. According to the plaintiff, this negative Google footprint has prevented him from finding employment since his initial firing several years ago." Unfortunately for him, "Google has rejected the order, saying that its U.S. headquarters will not be regulated by Japanese law, and that the case, according to its in-house privacy policy, does not warrant deleting autocomplete-suggested terms related to the petition, lawyer Hiroyuki Tomita said Sunday."
Great, now can we get a restraining order on the Live search feature too? It's giving me mental anguish
You mean that out of the 7 billion people on this planet, there might be one with the same name? And he might be a criminal? GASP.
No, what am I saying? That's crazy talk. Only one person can have that name, so clearly he did all those terrible things.
Secretary? Go fire that guy in cubicle 3. Google said he's a criminal.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Court orders employers not to be morons.
The guy has a name. When you time the first 3-4 letters of the name, google autocompletes the name with a Crime word, which links to 10,000 entries about said crime. And the HR lady who is looking at this results thinks the guy is a criminal, so she puts his resume in the reject pile.
I don't see how that is Google's fault. That's the fault of stupid HR ladies who don't know how to do a proper search (i.e. finish typing the guy's name).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
They have .jp domain names that could potentially be siezed. That would be highly disruptive. I'm sure that they also have assets in Japanese banks and do business inside the country. In short, they have plenty of assets under the jurisdiction of Japanese courts should they fail to comply with the court's order. Not being an expert on the local laws of Japan, I can't tell you how relevant the location of the physical server is, but I'd bet it's not that important to the case at hand.
1. There are international treaties and laws governing copyright enforced by Interpol.
2. Please point me to a single official statement from the White House or American ambassador on this
3. Assange has never been charged with a crime in the US. The US has not filed for his extradition. Megaupload had severs in the US that broke US law.
4. If you do business in a country you are bound by those laws. Google had to abide by Chinese laws in China for example. So they shifted traffic to servers in Hong Kong where laws are different. This isn't a difficult concept and it is global.
5. You've made a litany of unfounded, untrue statements.
You would be correct if you suggested that the US government has encouraged nations to pass copyright protection laws. But even in doing so, they acknowledge that each country has its own legal jurisdiction and legal system. The United States arguably doesn't have any exports nearly as important as IP, so the government tries to protect those interests in negotiating with other nations. It is in the best interest that they do so.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Seems to me that the HR flacks are not doing their job properly if they associate a search cloud with the work history of a prospective hire. If I do a search for a person and "autocomplete" gives me unusual results, I don't immediately stop typing and have a spaz-- I take an extra second to finish the search. I can't even see how this could be considered a form of libel or slander, as in the "Santorum" situation (which I find to be hilarious, and not slander at all BTW). This guy's beef is with the HR departments, not the company that makes tools used by the lazy HR drones.
Google is working exactly as it should-- associating popular searches with similar words. Let's say my name is Killroy, Bob-- does the judge really think that upon typing in "Kill" and upon seeing the following results: "killer elite, kill the irishman, kill bill, killer whale" the reasonable choice is to stop typing assume the applicant is a killer whale? Absurd.
On a related note, I made a JAVA applet that uses autocomplete to generate "food" for little animated "animals": AutoComplete Hive Mind Cannibals. I LIKE autocomplete, it is a weird profile of what people search for and what associations they make.
Rick Santorum's name didn't turn up defamatory results on a Google search until he started claiming that sexual acts between consenting adults were morally equivalent to sexual acts involving children and animals. In other words, that's satire and political speech, not a mistake.
I am officially gone from
That's totally different, MegaUpload was committing sins against our almighty lords the RIAA & MPAA.
My favorite Google link these days:
https://encrypted.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en
No login required, encrypted and no auto-complete, lets you actually finish typing what you want to search for without all the extraneous stuff popping up.
This is what I have my default search setup to use.