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Court Rules Google's Search Results Qualify As Free Speech
wabrandsma writes with this news from Ars Technica: The regulation of Google's search results has come up from time to time over the past decade, and although the idea has gained some traction in Europe (most recently with "right to be forgotten" laws), courts and regulatory bodies in the U.S. have generally agreed that Google's search results are considered free speech. That consensus was upheld last Thursday, when a San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled in favor of Google's right to order its search results as it sees fit.
Maybe it will get appealed to the SCOTUS. Or congress will change the legislation relevant to this. Remember what happened to Rick Santorum...
So, if Google's search results are considered free speech, do they also have the same responsibilities as other forms of free speech.
What if you search for a person and the results incorrectly suggests that the person is a pedophile? Does that qualify as libel, or is that suddenly not Google's problem?
While I agree with the ruling, I don't see how the first amendment applies. It states that "Congress shall make no law..." but since this was a civil case, and did not involve congress, how does the first amendment apply? Google should win the case simple because Google can do whatever they want in their search results. It is as simple as that. Applying the term "free speech" or "first amendment" to a computer generated algorithm seems like a slippery slope to me.
I just read the ruling: the case was dismissed because "the claims asserted against it arise from constitutionally protected activity..." so nothing to get excited about here...
So your rights are not really rights, but are privileges granted provided you don't do some other entirely legal thing? Fuck you.
It was a lawsuit claiming Google broke a law. If there can be no law, there can be no lawsuit.
I think the quote from UCLA law professor Eugene Volok in the article stated it best:
Think of Google as a massive guidebook. You ask it for information on X and it returns a list of results that it thinks (based on the algorithms) best match X. If someone made a list of "Top 10 Restaurants in New York City" and a restaurant owner was upset that his restaurant didn't make the list, would he be able to sue to get his included as the #1 restaurant in NYC? Of course not. The list publisher has the right to determine who they think are the top 10 restaurants. Likewise, Google has the right to determine who they think are the top matches for any given search.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
You mean, to present them from least relevant to totally irrelevant?
AC comments get piped to
DMCA does not trump free speech. However, you have no 'right' to use someone else's website to make your speech, so your free speech is not impacted by the DMCA.
So, if Google's search results are considered free speech, do they also have the same responsibilities as other forms of free speech. What if you search for a person and the results incorrectly suggests that the person is a pedophile? Does that qualify as libel, or is that suddenly not Google's problem?
It's not Google's problem to report that somebody else made a libelous claim any more than if you tell your neighbor "Hey, that guy John Doe down the street put on the internet that you're a convicted child molester but I know that's not true", your neighbor would have a legal claim against John Doe, not against you for telling him. The fact that Google reports a search result doesn't make them responsible for the content in the USA. Things might be different in Europe though.
They are your individual rights. They are not your collective rights when you choose to become part of some collective. You can still exercise your rights outside of the collective. Nothing is stopping that.
The corporation is a legal fiction with limited moral awareness and should be treated as such.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Tell that to any of *MANY* organzations which have incorporated such as Debian (Software in the Public Interest, Inc.), the FSF (Free Software Foundation, Inc.), the American Cancer Society (American Cancer Society, Inc.), the ACLU (ACLU is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and the ACLU Foundation is a 501(c)(4) corporation), not to mention many news organizations. Banging on the "corporations aren't people" theme is a mark of frustration; keeping it up is pretty much an exercise in petulance. If you want to complain about the strength of the voices of groups of people, find other ways to do it.
Our courts have it right. There are lots flaws in the U.S. system, but I am damn proud in our preference for the right to free speech. Threats to abrogate free speech are dangerous.
So this is actually a freedom of the press issue?
That at least seems to be more relevant, make more sense, and avoids expanding this whole "corporations are people" nonsense.
You can do the right thing and still do it for the wrong reason and manage to cause collateral damage. This is another fine case of that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why is a group of people who incorporate suddenly non-human, but a normal group apparently gets free speech rights? More importantly, where does the first amendment make such an exception to free speech rights?
Individuals can work in groups, and yet individuals working in groups someone lose their rights just because they're not working as individuals? How authoritarian of you.
You can still exercise your rights outside of the collective.
Where does the US constitution say you lose your free speech rights if you work in a group?
Then you should demand a refund from Google!
It was a lawsuit claiming Google broke a law.
Not it was not. No one claimed Google broke any law, and the government was not on either side of the case. This was a civil case, where someone thought Google was treating them unfairly.
Google is a business and has every right to be as silly as the Enquirer if it wants to be. And ... ... where are all the OTHER brazillion search engines in all this?
Google, Google, Google, why is it always Google? Momma always did like Google, best.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
And similar sites? After all, they don't host the content, they merely provide a search engine for the content.
Legal double standard in 3...2...1...
Now, robots have rights.
From TFA (emphasis mine):
The owner of a website called CoastNews, S. Louis Martin, argued that Google was unfairly putting CoastNews too far down in search results, while Bing and Yahoo were turning up CoastNews in the number one spot. CoastNews claimed that violated antitrust laws. It also took issue with Google's refusal to deliver ads to its website after CoastNews posted photographs of a nudist colony in the Santa Cruz mountains.
It was a lawsuit claiming Google broke a law.
Not it was not. No one claimed Google broke any law, and the government was not on either side of the case. This was a civil case, where someone thought Google was treating them unfairly.
Are you kidding?!? It was specifically a claim that Google broke a law - 15 U.S.C. 1–7 by not ranking using the same criteria as Bing and Yahoo (which is ridiculous anyway, since Yahoo is "powered by Bing!" so of course it has the same rankings).
You can read more about the Sherman Antitrust Act here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Without Congress creating the court, how can there be a civil case? The court's decisions would be unenforcible, and they wouldn't have laws by which to judge cases anyway.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Okay, I stand corrected. So they invoked antitrust law. Maybe first amendment angle was just to get people riled up. Arggh, I think legal reporting is almost as bad as technology reporting. Although overall arstechnica is pretty good on that.
It isn't always clear at a distance where a state court stands in the larger scheme of things and how much weight should be given its decisions.
In California, a Superior Court is simply one of 58 consolidated county and municipal trial courts.
Before June 1998, California's trial courts consisted of superior and municipal courts, each with its own jurisdiction and number of judges fixed by the Legislature. In June 1998, California voters approved Proposition 220, a constitutional amendment that permitted the judges in each county to merge their superior and municipal courts into a ''unified,'' or single, superior court. As of February 2001, all of California's 58 counties have voted to unify their trial courts.
Superior Courts
A few other people chimed in and pointed out quotes indicating that the lawsuit might have been based on antitrust claims. That makes more sense than the first amendment thing.
It was a lawsuit claiming Google broke a law.
Not it was not. No one claimed Google broke any law, and the government was not on either side of the case. This was a civil case, where someone thought Google was treating them unfairly.
Even though the government was not a plaintiff or defendant, it is still our laws that are being used to determine if the lawsuit wins. In this particular case it was anti-trust laws which were being examined.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
So if search results are free speech, then does that mean that law enforcement can't force them to remove search results via DMCAs? It's still not illegal material, but rather effectively *talking about* (linking to) illegal material that was generated/hosted by someone else. It's always been odd to me that you can write an article about an entire collection of sites (including ones that are illegal), or even archive them, but a search engine can't auto-index a complete set of sites (including the ones that are illegal).
Where does the US constitution say you lose your free speech rights if you work in a group?
Right next to where it says your conglomerate has the rights of a person.
I love how far this can be extended, as well. Corporate armies? Sounds awesome.
The obvious thing you're missing, is that the rights of the individuals within the groups were never infringed. The rights of the group were infringed, and the ability to infringe on a group is literally enshrined into US case law, so long as it's not a protected one.
But hey, when "Right to Work" is a euphemism for "abridging the rights of 2 people (corporation, union) to form a contract between themselves" and somehow not an acknowledgement that the rights of the individual are superior to the rights of the group, I can see how a lot of shit confuses you.
The obvious thing you're missing, is that the rights of the individuals within the groups were never infringed.
Except that they were. By infringing upon the group's free speech rights, you infringe upon the free speech rights of the individuals. Your view seems to be that if you work in a group, the government has unlimited power to infringe upon that group's rights. The constitution allows no such thing. And since working in groups is beneficial and can be practically required to get anything done, I think I'll pass on your authoritarian bullshit.
So no, I think I'll take a government with limited powers; powers spelled out by the constitution.
I think that is a very true and logical assessment. It's just unfortunate that Google has become so ubiquitous. People can choose to use another search engine, but rarely do. It's already very difficult to run a business if Google isn't putting your business high in their ranks. I believe for the time being the listing process is mostly working, but as they continue on I worry that Google could become the gatekeepers of the internet. Pay the fee and kiss the ring or the internet will never know you exist.
True, but if you are going to sue Google, you had better be able to prove that Google lowered your ranking with malicious intent. That is, not because you weren't following SEO rules that they apply to all websites but because Google just decided "we don't like this guy" and ranked you lower. If your argument is "we want to be the first listing and we're going to file suit to make this so", then you deserve to lose.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Individuals can vote. Corporations can't. Individuals that are stockholders and/or employees of a corporation do not lose the right to vote. This not not considered "los[ing] their rights".
Similarly, individuals have free speech. Even if corporations don't, each and every individual connected with the corporation still has free speech. Some will doubtless agree with the corporation, and will speak in its favor.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'm intrigued by this theory that, if two corporations act differently, without any collaboration, that's a violation of anti-trust law.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Individuals can vote. Corporations can't.
Invalid comparison. There's no real way to combine your efforts when it comes to voting (except to vote for the same people, I guess). You can combine your efforts to create a coherent message, however.
And for the 50th time, where the fuck does the constitution even make such a distinction? Why would it even be desirable to not have free speech just because you worked in a group? Sounds like an authoritarian nightmare to me.
Some will doubtless agree with the corporation, and will speak in its favor.
Then what, exactly, are you proposing?