Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Undoing an Internet Smear Campaign?
An anonymous reader writes "My fiancee is a professional writer. She has a great industry reputation and everyone that knows her loves her. But her ex-husband has maintained a number of websites in her name (literally, the URL is her name) that are filled with insane ravings and defamatory content. Have you ever had to deal with an internet smear campaign? The results float to the top of every Google or Bing search of her name. He currently lives abroad and cannot be served with legal papers. His websites are hosted overseas as well, and do not respond to conventional letters or petitions. Because of his freedom of speech rights, few U.S. courts will assert that his websites are truly libelous, either, and it's still difficult to prove any real 'damages' are done by it. Still, we'd like to see them go away. I'm turning to the best community of geeks in the world: how do I deal with this given the limited options at my disposal?"
SEO
boom goes the dynamite....
Put up your own website... fill it with good content... get links?
What Happens On The Internet, Stays On The Internet.
"Because of his freedom of speech rights, few U.S. courts will assert that his websites are truly libelous, either, and it's still difficult to prove any real 'damages' are done by it. Still, we'd like to see them go away."
Simple. Form a Corporation using the name. Instant win.
Or counter-smear.
DDOS
Copyright the name, contact ICANN and have the domains yanked.
... is the legal term you're looking for.
A trademark doesn't have to be registered. If she's been writing under her own name for years, then her name is a valuable piece of intellectual property and it's entitled to exactly the same protections as the name of 'Mickey Mouse'.
Of course, that means you need to act quickly before the trademark is considered to be officially diluted or worthless.
IANAL, TINLA etc.
Eh..."reputation management" and SEO have basically been all but outlawed by Google. Just point a bunch of phpld directory links at his site with irrelivant keywords and descriptions...or submit a DMCA takedown request to the search engines.
Trademark her name and submit an ownership transfer appeal to the domain authority.
And obviously neither is the OP: "He currently lives abroad and cannot be served with legal papers. His websites are hosted overseas as well, and do not respond to conventional letters or petitions. Because of his freedom of speech rights, few U.S. courts will assert that his websites are truly libelous, either,
For God's sake begin by hiring someone who actually knows about this stuff instead of relying on what you learned from daytime TV.
Three Squirrels
If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must shut down these websites!
Everything is better with chainsaws.
That's what matters. Maybe she can trademark her name and seize the domain as being confusingly similar, but it's still throwing time and attention at somebody who clearly craves it, for dubious gain.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
That link is about folks who actually did those things and want to bury things that they think a future employer may find objectionable.
In this case, someone is making shit up and defaming someone.
The person asking this needs to have his wife sue. Do not pass go. Go directly to lawyer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting
http://blogs.lawyers.com/2012/11/internet-defamation-cybersquatting/
http://www.traverselegal.com/internet-defamation/defamation/what-is-a-defamation-of-character-assessment/#more-129
I'm sure that many laywers will do this for you for $$$, but it may also be possible to have the victim file under ACPA to force the domain names to be given to them
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property00/domain/legislation.html
but that may only apply to trademark owners and not defamation victims.
-I'm just sayin'
Many countries like England have extremely strong libel laws. She should hire an english attorney and have him prosecuted in the UK. Its pretty much irrelevant to the UK system where the harm took place.
Check the WHOIS information for the domains. If there is any missing information at all or if the phone numbers or email addresses don't work, you can file a report with ICANN. I have found that many times people will not reply to the complaint which means the domains are shut down within a few weeks.
DMCA is only for copyright violations
Maybe she should pick a new name, possibly a business name to work through and notify her current circle of contacts of the change.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This sounds like a tactic to get you to set a date for the wedding... Being a woman, she would have already through of this as the easy out that once she get's married she'll likely change her last name which would help greatly with this issue. Given you haven't brought that up in your post, I'm guessing she hasn't mentioned it to you. This means that your wedding isn't any time in the near future or a date hasn't been set at all. So, I'm guessing you've proposed at some point but aren't commited enough to tie the knot. Once a big deal has been made of this situation, she will suddenly come up with the 'idea' that getting married will solve things, and the sooner the better.
I'm telling you this because you also need to keep an eye on things in the contraceptive department because if this little ruse doesn't work to get you to hitched, that will be next on the list.
Look, I know a lot of people here claim to know things they don't, but I am posting as Annonymous Coward because I don't have a slashdot account so you can trust that I know a lot more about women than most people her. Stay strong my brother.
Lawyers are much better than slashdot at telling you what your legal options might be.
Seriously, where do you get this stuff? There's not a lot of obvious overlap between libel law and free speech. At least in the US, the issues are whether material is (1) defamatory and (2) untrue. So far as I know, that's it; if the material's untrue, then saying false things about people is not generally regarded as "free speech". (Note: "untrue" means "provable as a matter of fact to be untrue", not just "I don't think it's true".)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Freedom of speech in the US seems to be continually misunderstood - it means you have the freedom to talk smack about the Government and they won't seek repercussions. No matter what you think about the state of the country, at least it's safer to criticize the Administration in the US than it would be in, say, Iran or North Korea or even China. And that's all because of freedom of speech.
This does NOT apply one bit to citizens having a go at one another, and if it can be shows that it's truly smear and there's nothing tangible to the accusations, then it can most definitely be treated as libelous and freedom of speech is irrelevant here. You can't just say whatever you like without there being consequences, particularly if you lie.
Actually, the submitter didn't say it was true. The submitter didn't even say it was not libel. The submitter said he didn't think a court would find it to be libel, based on "free speech rights".
This does not argue that the submitter has a nuanced-enough understanding of the law to justify trying to draw specific conclusions about what the facts are from his speculations as to what a court would rule.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I think you answered your own post. You said the material is not libelous -- ie: it's true.
Not libelous and false are not two sides of the same coin. You can't infer one from something not being the other. Example: site gets opened with the name of someone in the URL, and the site owner than proceeds to post timecube and NAMBLA articles. Not libel, but not fun either. Or, just reposts random porn to that site. Or of frat parties. Or posts about how great coke and pot are.
There are great ways to ruin reputations, none of which involve explicit falsehoods. Lets hope you never have to find out first-hand.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Set up some zombies to DDOS him until he goes away.
You should also talk to a lawyer. Making assumptions about what the law will and won't say when there isn't a lawyer involved is prone to failure.
I think you have those two steps the wrong way round.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
You can easily get the domain name that matches her name.
1. Have her trademark it
2. File a UDRP
For the rest, SEO.
BTW, you are not the crazy ex trying to figure out how she can take away your cyber-stalking, right?
I'm pretty sure you meant to post this on /b/
Why turn to us geeks? So that some of us could arrange somehow to get his websites down? I'd rather turn to a PR community if I were you, or a lawyer community (perhaps lawyers in the country of residence of the ex-husband)
Ah, I see your mistake. You think that from IF A THEN B follows If B THEN A. Rookie logic mistake. Not to mention that something can be damaging to a reputation without being strictly false, through merely presenting an unsavory association that is difficult to prove to be incorrect.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
This website is designed specifically for this, and is free.
http://brandyourself.com/
Using Bing, Google etc., there are about eight web pages or so that I would not want out there. Oddly enough, the origin of those web pages were back in 1989 when I gave my name and phone # to some local BBSs. BBSs and IRC channels I stopped talking on about 17 years ago. For whatever reasons, these things float back up. They're not all bad, I'd just rather they not be around.
A solution - on Google a search for my name, first page is my Github, my Twitter, my Stack Overflow, my Facebook (which is fairly employer-scrubbed). Also some other people with my name, ancestral records of people with the same name etc. The following pages are more of the same - me talking on technical mailing lists etc.
Have them get their name out there in a positive way. Nothing negative about me is on the first 100 searches for my name. It is mostly me on various technical web sites, mailing lists etc.
How many times have I read an opinion about an injustice on /. only to find out later it wasn't such an injustice? I notice OP didn't provide any URLs to let people make up their own minds.
Good point! How do we know his fiancée isn't Sarah Palin? If she is, the OP should be aware that Amazon is not a reference to Caribou Barbie, and those negative reviews are not a smear campaign, they're the opinions of people who don't know her personally but read her book and didn't like it.
The Mafia (the Sicilian one, not the "MAFIAA") also provides a "clean-up" service that might be useful here....
"True" equals "not libelous". But "not libelous" does not automatically equal "true".
He didn't make that up. You did, as a strawman.
I've been through this myself...
As a temporary action, get the word out -- literally. Build a site or two of your own on her if needed, e.g, her official site, then get in touch with her fans, list, the press, whatever, and serve them a sensationalist "writer gets libeled online by her ex" story... If they bite, the site with her name in the domain won't get to Google's first page of results with a little luck. Even if it does, the many results that mention the smear campaign on the same page will serve as a counterweight and douse it.
In my case, that was enough to get the domain. In case it's not enough for you to do the same, sue...
Sue the ex-husband for libel, defamation, whatever... but also -- and more importantly -- to recover the domain name. If it's a .com or any other US tld, it's under US jurisdiction and can be seized by a US court; period, end of story -- irrespective of where the ex-boyfriend might be based or hosted. If the MAFIAA can shut down .com domains that serve torrents, and big business can grab domains on grounds that they're too similar to their own, you can shut down or retrieve a domain. Her name is her de facto trademark. Don't just sue the ex-boyfriend, either. Also file complaints with the registrar, the hosting business, etc. They'll take pre-emptive action more often than not when contacted. Consult with an attorney specialized in this kind of stuff, and take action under his guidance.
links or it didn't happen!
Many countries like England have extremely strong libel laws.
Are you recommending libel tourism?
She should hire an english attorney and have him prosecuted in the UK.
Defamation judgments outside the United States that violate the First Amendment protection of freedom of expression are unenforceable in the United States. This became explicit in the third quarter of 2010.
The UK is reputed to be the best venue to sue -from- (if you can afford the legal fees).
Others may be able to share their success stories...
Well, no, being untrue is necessary but not sufficient for it to be found to be libel.
There's a gray area in between: what if the accusations are untrue, but you can't prove it?
Note, IANAL, so I don't know if a civil suit for libel would work out well if the accusations are all hearsay (e.g., "I heard that she has sex with her dog!"), but if the allegations are vague enough and difficult or impossible to disprove ("she told me that she's a pedophile", leading to a he-said-she-said argument with her claiming she never said any such thing), she may be in a difficult spot.
Any lawyers here with expertise in libel? Asking software and IT geeks seems like the worst place to find advice for this, this is definitely a question for a lawyer.
My suggestion is to hold off until you've been married to her for a year or so - that way, you can better determine whether her ex-husband's statements are indeed a smear campaign or are rooted in fact.
#DeleteChrome
Or, you could harass him in a similar manner: go to his family members and friends (and msot importantly, his employer) and tell them all what a giant asshole he is and how he's doing all these things to you.
claim trademark to her own name
Those in glass houses shouldn't throw website URLs. Don't actually do the same to him, just let him know that you can and would and he'll take them down ASAP.
I see your debating skills are on par with your logic skills.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Yep, SEO the shit out of the sites, in the most transparent, sure-to-get-a-site-delisted ways possible. Internet Judo, use his strength against him. Since they're on top, it's not like you can make it any worse, and it also means you don't have any direct contact with the guy--it's Google/Bing delisting him, not you. Anonymize the WHOIS information, and deny any knowledge if the guy contacts you. "What, you put up a site saying bad complaining about me? Weird, man, but whatever floats your boat. Good luck with that I guess."
And of course if Google/Bing contact you, just say, "I've been contracted to make this the top result, if you try to delist this site you'll be hearing from my lawyers." They already know you can't do jack, and they'll enjoy tweaking "your" nose and you'll find the site delisted in short order.
Other alternatives
DDOS: Illegal, don't be an idiot. Also feeds the troll, you know better than that don't you?
Register trademark & use ICANN: You're rolling the dice here, feeling lucky?
Anything + lawyer: Probably best chance of success, once you sue successfully it just makes further suits easier if he's dumb enough to stick a fork in the toaster a second time. But keep in mind, these guys do not understand the Streisand effect, and what's more, many probably actively want it. Free publicity for them, and then you have to pay!
Completely ignore it: Probably the best option. People get bored. He's doing this to get a rise out of someone who rejected him. Chances are good he'll escalate when he doesn't get the reaction he wants. If he goes big enough, you'll be able to catch his hand in the bear trap of the court system, otherwise just keep ignoring it. Escalation means you're winning. If he's quietly running the same site 3 years later, well, then you're dealing with a patient, smart, asshole, which is pretty much your worst nightmare. Good luck.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Yes. Also, the call his mother approach often works.
Hasn't stopped the RIAA from claiming copyright on songs they don't own or represent, to include public domain works.
This really should have been posted on FML, not Slashdot.
This sig intentionally left blank.
If only I could find the link to the story on here where someone did that.
Although if it's a common name it might not be trade marked either.
I would assume that what is most worrying is that most people that google her wouldn't tell you that they did so. To at least defend against that, your fiancee should create a blog defending herself from the accusations, so at least her side would be expressed.
At least it would garner sympathy for her, and potential employers/clients may feel pity for her more than anything and overlook the whole mess.
That's only the first half of it. First, file a legal trademark on the name. Then file a UDRP complaint and take the domain.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"Hey, how best to censor someone saying something I disagree with?"
Any trick that will ultimately work for you, will work for some religious group trying to shut down opposed discourse. I'm sorry your ex had such terrible choice in mates before you, but I don't think there's a way to silence him saying crazyass bullshit.
http://martinanavratilova.com/ was taken from a squatter via a trademark claim. That was a decade or more ago, and I can't find a link.
Send the John Boehner to the ex-husband. No good can come of the encounter.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
That is a brilliant solution.
Using the full name as a URL and defacing it is blatant slander. I bet you can take this to court and win pretty easily, but IANAL.
The G
...because personally I would have given up after reading half of the utterly useless comments here.
:(
This is what you need to do and it will work:
Find a highly reputable P.R. firm that deals with SEO. I'm not talking about the kind of SEO "specialist" that you find on Craigslist - I'm talking about the kind that handles Fortune 500 businesses. The P.R. firm will begin creating sensible blogs in your name having something to do with an interest of yours or possibly a business. The will create Facebook pages, Google+ pages, Twitter tweets as well. The P.R. firm will also create articles about you and/or your business which will appear on a variety of small sites . The will link everything together through a variety of sites that they own. The Blogs and P.R. releases and everything else will change the page rank so that your good press will appear way above the bad foreign sites that concern you.
All the above will probably cost you between 5 and 10K at the very least but it will solve the problem. You will have to decide if the expense is justified - you could well consider it a tax deductible expense if the P.R. company concentrates on a business of yours.
A related note. - in the heyday of Slashdot what I suggested would have been one of the very first comments and the most highly rated. It speaks to where the readership has fallen to today that you have had to sift through dozens of useless comments talking about lawsuits, freedom of speech , trademarking your name (wtf!) and even a couple of misogynists raging about "teh wimmen"
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
Marry her. She changes both her official last name, and her pen name. And bam! the guy has to re-buy new domains matching the new name, and has to re-do the smear campaign from scratch :) And preferably, before she changes her name, pre-emptively buy domains before the ex-husband does.
Google or Bing: internet reputation management. There are many legitimate companies that help people from all walks of life get their good names back via a variety of legitimate methods.
Alright! I know I'm in there! If I don't come out, I'll have to come in after me!
With a new woman. His obsession will fade, and the domains will expire.
Long ago and far away, a Google for my real name turned up about ten pages of results that were me, before getting around to anything that wasn't. Of course, those pages dealt with different bits of me, so there could still have been some confusion over whether they meant the technologist with my name, or the writer with my name, or the music journalist with my name, or the photographer with my name, or the foreign-affairs sort with my name - never mind that they were all the same person.
In the last few years, Google has managed to find people with the same name who aren't actually me, so there's a brain surgeon, a rugby player, and a soccer player, as well as a bunch of youthful sorts half a world away. At the same time, I've been a little more careful about the "make this visible to search engines" boxes on sites. So now, Googling my name finds a variety of people, most of whom aren't me.
I would suggest that the OP and his fiancée create five or ten online identities with the same name that her ex refers to, with details that don't match her real identity, but do match (or at least are ambiguous about matching) things her ex is saying. Give people reason to stop and doubt whether the person being badmouthed is that one, or some other one.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Like These guys? (NSFW Link -not Pr0n or anything, but ED is usually on the "naughty" list at corporations).
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
Anyone else think the original post was written by "the writer," who is searching for some help with a story?
It reads like it was written by a woman and there is that troubling character development -- a "professional" writer, "everyone who knows her loves her" stuff.
If it's a real post, I think we all know that nothing says "I love you" more than having the guy whacked. ;-)
Wow, amazing how much useless advice there is here. You might reconsider that "best community of geeks" through.
Advice: google the term "cybersquatting."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Share the links to the sites. I wanna know what's up.
The question I have is, what if the ex is telling the truth?
Be seeing you...
... unless the material can be proven libelous (and even then it will be a long, ugly battle). If people like Rick Santorum can't make the spreadingsantorum.com site go away, you're not likely going to make yours go away. Your best shot will be to get a positive site ranked higher using various SEO tactics.
The one Im thinking of happened within the past month. It was posted either here or on TorrentFreak.
Angry at an ex? Angry at an employer? Angry at your neighbor? Pissed off that you hit on a guy and he wasn't interested and shot you down? You can easily ruin someone's life by just posting shit about them on a site called the Rip Off Report. Google curiously gives them incredibly high page ranking, but the site is nothing more than a scam. They NEVER REMOVE ANYTHING and they're proud of it. Even if you go to court. And you can be anonymous, while putting up real information (including name, etc) of your "target". It'll sit there forever. It'll get ranked high up on the first page of Google. They exploit shady SEO practices. And the only way they'll work with you is IF YOU PAY THEM for a "partnership service" that they advertise. Reportedly, it's around $5,000 -- give or take.
You can google for all sorts of controversy regarding it. It has ruined a lot of people's lives -- and you're not even dealing with international issues or anything.
I had someone defrauding users on my site, once. I banned them for it and next thing I knew, I had a really scummy "review/complaint/whatever" on this site. Absolutely no recourse and the other person is anonymous (though, obviously not -- since I recognized their insane babbling just like the hundreds of emails they sent me for a year after they were banned).
It's really really shady shit and I don't think they're the only site that does it.
I tend to agree with the AC, since the second amendment appears to protect the "right to harass" as well as the "right to offend", the law is not interested. So you either suck it up, or sort it out yourself with the less civilized eye for an eye protocol. No need for guns or friends in the intelligence community (since you know ehere he lives). Just tell your story at the local bar, someone will know where to hire a "wrecking crew" to redecorate his home office whilst giving him a lecture on how quickly life turns to shit when people use "free speech" as an excuse for their bad behavior. $500 tops with no hospital grade violence, slime ball will be back in his box before you can finish your beer.
Thing is, you no longer have the option of cheap, efficient, "natural justice". By posting the story on Slashdot you have already committed yourself to fighting him indirectly, and worse still, on his home ground.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I can't find a link.
Good for you, man. It would've probably cost you 300 Euros.
Sounds like he's going to an awful lot of effort, just run with the new brand he's helping to create and get your wife to become whatever the smear campaign says she is. Then write her into the novels as a character.
profit!!!
SEO is actually a great idea.
I work with writers on press releases as part of my job and I can tell you that if you publish a press release with your name appearing it in many times, there is a good chance that you could push his website off the front page of Google or at least far down the list. Part of the reason for this is when you seed a press release it goes out to multiple sources who are in good standing with Google, and so these links tend to propagate toward the top of the list for low-volume terms. Most people's names fall into this category and the name we are talking about here certainly does or this guys website would have never even appeared on the list. If your name was Michael Jordan, for example, you would never have this problem.
So my recommendation is to get a press release out. If you already have a business or other important news item that it may be valuable to communicate about on the Internet, you may be able to kill two birds with one stone here. You could earn a little karma on the Internet for your business or writing product while at the same time drowning out the message you don't want to see when your name is googled.
As a professional writer you may even have a fair grasp on how to proceed in this direction on your own once suggested, but if you need help with it, as I said I do it as part of my job, so you could check out elephantwriters.com if more assistance is needed.
__
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. My original sig was raptured. Details at 11.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
A true writer would be writing a book about the experience, rather than embarking on a quixotic quest to silence her deranged ex.
Amazon is a private-sector business. Delisting from Amazon doesn't bar one from relisting elsewhere.
The Mafia (the Sicilian one, not the "MAFIAA") also provides a "clean-up" service that might be useful here....
Any of them would be successful. Depends on the country. In some countries you can also make the system work against your target - like filing information to the local variant of the IRS stating that mr Soandso has been paid a salary of X dollars, to be taxed in his home country. That can cause him to be responsible to pay additional tax - or fight it, but the tax authorities are by default right until proven wrong.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
No disrespect meant to any denizen of slashdot, but the definitive place to go to ask about this sort of thing is Groklaw.
But please be prepared for the fact that the first answer you will get will be: "Hire a lawyer..." Getting past that, you'll find a lot of useful advice from knowledgeable people.
They are cheap in most places defined as "abroad".
not war ;) I see that 99% of advice here is to fight hate with hate. Potentially involving 'lawyers', which is a name for a bunch of educated scumbags.
Really, it is more productive to actually talk to the guy who maintains the websites and ask him what he wants. Why does he do it? Does *he* feel that he is the wronged party? Maybe he wants recognition for all the work he did putting the original websites, for example. Before, he had the girl. Now some sleaze came and took his girl away. Would you be mad?
Literally, reality bites. Where does the ex-husband live and how much are you willing to pay? There's always a bunch of burly men ready to knock at, um, knock his door down and "convince" him to give away all those websites or turn them off.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
As I see it, there are only three options:
... to be sure.
1. Invoke DMCA against him if he's using any images without permission
2. Start your own counter-smear campaign by setting up your own URL's in his name, and listing that shit at google.
3. Take off, Nuke the site from orbit.
Think about it - if my name is Joe Smith, why would I create a website www.joesmith.com and then slander myself in my own name? Wouldn't a potential client see enough ripping of myself on www.joesmith.com, .net, .org, and see the connection? There may be one or two people out there that would fall for it, but most people are tech savvy enough to see through it.
It sounds like they've been through the ringer with this ex-husband, but it seems like it wouldn't have that big of an effect, particularly once the woman's actual work was seen for what it truly is. My guess is only a few people would follow the lie. Just a guess.
This is the kind of craxy one finds on Alex Jones or rense.con. Or the local Tea Party rally.
CraZy, that is.
"If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career."
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Sue him in England.
As we all know, UK libel law, even as "reformed" presumes his guilt once accused.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Er, what?
1. Non-defamatory claims aren't libel, whether or not they are true, so far as I know. Not all insulting or negative remarks are defamatory.
2. I believe there's some exceptions for stuff having to do with public figures.
3. You can firmly believe something, but not think a court will be convinced of it.
Believing that something someone says about you is untrue is not by any means a rational basis for concluding that a court will consider it to be libel.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
You are fighting on different fronts, and each area requires its own approach. I will, for the moment, just take the story at face value (in my experience there are usually untold stories that can greatly change or add to the picture).
1 - Jurisdiction. I don't know where the husband lives and where the websites are, but there are few places in the world where you are left entirely without power - especially since your post seems to suggest the attacks are personal. Can't help you there without knowing more, sorry, but you're giving up too quickly.
2 - Internet. If the domain names are hers, are named after her or relate in any other way to her there is scope for declaring them her property or a trademark violation, but you have to see that in the context of where they are hosted. Whatever you do, PLEASE do not go into discussion as a typical American and demand things because you will have lost the leverage without even having a discussion. First find out about local laws and see what leverage you have and respect that things work differently there. This is not exactly a short process and needs some sensitivity, but in my experience, a little bit of diplomacy and tact goes a long way (yes, I've done this before).
3 - Reputation. There is zero you can do about the situation right now - you will need to disable the broadcast before you can start repairing, and the effort depends very much on the type of rantings online. I apologise I can't help you right now, but without specifics I cannot tell you what to do other than that removal of the offending sites together with publishing is really the fastest way to clean it up. You can try to override his ranking but that takes a lot of effort which may not pay off. There are also other ways, but they are not suitable for a public forum (involve Intellectual Property) and they are *expensive*.
4 - The individual in question himself. Unless you deal with him this is like a disaster waiting to repeat itself and no, I'm not talking about "dealing with him" in the lead filled Hollywood fantasy, I'm talking about establishing some form of communication or even meeting up. People don't suddenly turn into deluded idiots and it may be worth establishing what is really going on (although I obviously don't know the whole story). The prime benefit of this last step is that it may remove the need for everything of the above - he is at the root of your problem. See if there is a way you can negotiate a truce or have a 3rd party help you with that - especially tech people tend to forget that taking care of the human factor can be far more effective than plastering over the key problem with technology.
All in all, good luck.
Insert
The problem is that her reputation has been established with her current name - reputation doesn't rename very well. This is used in reverse by companies that have really screwed up their reputation: they go through a "rebranding" exercise or merge with another company to make sure all the horror stories don't immediately come up when you research them, it takes digging to connect the dots.
Insert
Unfortunately this happens quite often. There is a specific type of tactics used to bring down these sites or knock them off the top of SERPs, it is called "Reputation Management". Depending on the competition and other factors it can be a little pricey, so you will have to outweigh the benefits against the cost. Feel free to contact me for a reference.
Not that I agree with the vast majority of what they're used for, but reputation.com is one the outfits that springs to mind. Definietely go on the trademarking of one's own name then yank the domain on a uDRP complaint.
Howard Hughes used that trick for years. Eventually it was invalidated but only in a California court. This is the best idea here because it could give the OP's wife cause to seize the domains.
Every rule has more than one consequence.
Looking at it from a different angle (and I should state clearly up-front here that IANAL) the OP appears to be saying that this person is misrepresenting the content of the sites as being by her, not about her.
Under such circumstances, libel and slander are clearly irrelevant, but how about fraud?
Obviously this is an assumption, based on my reading of the OP. Without a link, I can't tell if the ex is defaming, or impersonating the submitters fiancee.
Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)