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First Amendment Protection For Search Results?

Posted by Soulskill on from the don't-search-for-fire-in-a-crowded-theater dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A legal paper (PDF), commissioned by Google and written by Eugene Volokh and Donald Falk, makes the case that search results should be protected under the First Amendment, thereby making regulation of search results illegal. The authors say a search engine 'uses sophisticated computerized algorithms, but those algorithms themselves inherently incorporate the search engine company engineers' judgments about what material users are likely to find responsive to these queries.' Cory Doctorow's reaction: 'I think that the editorial right to exercise judgment is much more widely understood than the sacred infallibility of robotic sorting. I certainly support it more. But I wonder if Google appreciates that it will now have to confront people who are angry about their search rankings by saying, "I'm sorry, we just don't like you very much" instead of "I'm sorry, our equations put you where you belong." And oy, the libel headaches they're going to face.'"

2 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Google: "Corporation is a person"? by StarcraftWin · · Score: -1, Flamebait
    What GENIUS at Google's board approved this idea? Its not like the entire fing country is livid about the Supreme Court holding that corporations are people - which makes zero sense. But here, GOOGLE, is now not only claiming not only will *it* do no eeevil, but that *it is a person* and *it has Free Speech right*.

    Is this the final legacy of Eric Schmidt, by any chance? Upset about being push aside, he's approving this kind of Google killing strategy?

    The notion that an elected set of representatives would create a baseline secret test to check google's results is an excellent and needed one. a light weight check process could be easily designed and periodically launched to *measure* the results.

    Likewise, all products gain from consistent quality measurements.

    On top of that, Google themselves is silencing the release of research paper about Google+ and social networks. Talk about hypocrisy!

    Google blocked me from publishing my book

    Many of you have asked me why my book ‘Social Circles‘ was delayed, and why it has been removed from Amazon. I wrote the book in collaboration with Google, and in June 2010 they officially gave me written permission to publish it. The book content, the title, and the cover all existed prior to Emerald Sea (Google+). However, after the PR frenzy around the leaking of the project in July 2010, Google verbally rescinded permission to publish, and blocked me from publishing until after Google+ launched. I understood and respected their decision at the time. However, they continue to block it. Now that Google+ has launched, I honestly can’t see why they don’t respond to my emails requesting permission to publish. The book contains no proprietary information, it is based almost entirely on research from 3rd parties (mostly universities) and any Google research referenced is already in the public domain.

  2. Google is largely moderated now by flakas · · Score: -1, Flamebait
    As people often note Google has a large problem with spam results, but saying that the search results are selected with honest algorithm made by engineers is just lying. Google now employes thousands of people who's job is to check search queries and the results they get. They either moderate down the sites they don't like or completely remove them. This already makes Google heavily biased, and on top of that their algorithms highly favor their own sites.

    Of course, while the paper is published by "independent" source, Google has commissioned it for less than honest purposes:

    Google commissioned the paper, presumably to help ward off calls for government regulation of its search results.

    As noted previously, Google has come under TONS of scrutiny from different governments and several U.S. government agencies. They have used their monopoly to illegally promote their own other services, all hidden behind the old "but it is just our algorithms at works!".

    As Google is maintaining strict editorial process of the search queries, I think it would be good to hold them to responsibilities for them too. Google has shown that they can remove content from their service. Just like newspapers aren't allowed to show illegal things, Google should not be either. If Google has a problem with this, they need to stop manually deciding what's good for people and use an algorithm that is actually fair and isn't biased.