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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."
A lot of places over there present search terms rather than URL's as references for objects. This is in the majority of advertising. It is wrong, but it is what is commonly done. They have confused address with search. And this is the result
So wait... Someone with his name apparently committed some crimes that were substantial enough to warrant being memorialized on the internet.
He's not suing for libel or anything, he's suit for invasion of privacy. Does that mean he DID commit those crimes?
There is so much fail in this I don't know where to begin:
-Not hiring someone because of an unsubstantiated internet search
-Suing google, demanding the disabling of a perfectly good feature instead of asking google to somehow adjust their indexes
-(Potentially) committing crimes that get you plastered all over the internet in the first place.