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'Bankrupt' Australian Surgeon Sues Google For Auto-Complete
An anonymous reader writes "Australian surgeon Guy Hingston is suing Google in the U.S. for 'auto-complete' defamation. Typing in his name brings up 'Guy Hingston bankrupt' in the auto-complete. The association seems to have come about because Hingston purchased an aviation group CoastJet which went bankrupt two-and-a-half years later. Hingston himself was also bankrupted. Hingston claims this association has cost him customers and is suing Google for $75k, plus court costs. Google has often found itself the target of litigation over auto-complete searches. Are auto-complete results even useful? Should Google be policing the auto-complete suggestions?"
Under Australian Law the Truth is a Defence to Defamation. You don't even need to show "public interest", just that what was said was "substantially true." http://www.thenewsmanual.net/Resources/medialaw_in_australia_02.html
But he's suing in America which has even stronger free speech laws! Good luck with that!
It wasn't overturned, his lawyer said it was annulled: "Separate documents obtained from Insolvency Trustee Services Australia show Dr Hingston was bankrupted on August 4 2009. Dr Hingston's lawyer Philip Beazley said that bankruptcy had been annulled."
...
http://www.itsa.gov.au/dir228/itsaweb.nsf/docindex/Bankruptcy-%3EPersonal+Insolvency+Information-%3E5F.+Annulment What is annulment?
Annulment is the cancellation of a bankruptcy.
There are three ways a bankruptcy can be annulled:
* The creditors’ debts including interest and trustee’s fees and expenses are paid in full.
* Your creditors accept a composition or arrangement which is an offer of something less than payment in full.
* Application to the court in some limited circumstances.
Effects of annulment.
* Your annulment is recorded on the public record, the National Personal Insolvency Index (NPII) database, forever.
* Assets not needed by your trustee to pay your creditors, expenses and fees will be returned to you.
etc
"Google's machine learning algorithm" is itself a misleading phrase, since Google refines their algorithm using actual people and is quite capable of refining it to avoid causing this guy problems--they just didn't do it to him. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/06/07/194210/google-outlines-the-role-of-its-human-evaluators http://slashdot.org/story/12/11/27/1435219/googles-manual-for-its-unseen-human-raters