Posts Tagged ‘Google’

August 21 roundup

  • NYC criminal defense lawyer and TV commentator Robert Simels convicted of witness tampering in closely watched case [NY Daily News and more, NYLJ, Greenfield, Simon/Legal Ethics Forum]
  • Title IX suit says harassment by other students pushed school girl into anorexia, school should pay [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
  • Federal judge upholds some Louisiana restrictions on lawyer advertising, but says rules on Internet communication unconstitutionally restrict speech [WAFB, Ron Coleman]
  • “Woman Claims Display Was So Distracting, She Fell Over It” [Lowering the Bar; Santa Clara County, Calif. Dollar Tree]
  • Associated Press now putting out softer line on blogger use of its copy, but is it a trap? [Felix Salmon, earlier]
  • Update: Google ordered to identify person who set up nasty “skank” blog to attack NYC model [Fashionista, earlier here and here]
  • Some speak as if lawsuits over “alienation of affections” a thing of the past, alas not so [Eugene Volokh, more, yet more; earlier]
  • Connecticut: “State Holds Hearing On Whether Group Can Hand Out Food To The Poor” [Hartford Courant; “Food Not Bombs” group at Wesleyan]

Note: post was mistakenly titled as “August 22 roundup” at first, now fixed; thanks to reader Jonathan B. for catching.

Around the web, July 3

  • Transportation Security Administration detained comic book artist based on art he was carrying with him [Popehat]
  • More unease over Federal Trade Commission move to regulate bloggers’ freebies [Citizen Media Law, CEI “Open Market”, earlier] “I could care less that Milly the Yarn Spinner at millysworldofyarn.com is getting free samples of yarn to review on her blog.” [John Dvorak, PC Mag]
  • “Judge Calls Frivolous Suits Against Attorneys a ‘Disturbing Trend'” [NYLJ; Staten Island, N.Y.]
  • Sad news: Excellent online music service Pandora, unable to negotiate rights affordably, shuts down for customers outside the U.S. [Prefixmag, earlier]
  • Joseph Stiglitz says the UN has a key role to play in “reforming the global financial and economic system”, which “is a bad idea. It is a very bad idea.” [Tyler Cowen]
  • All assemble for trial: more installments in White Coat’s saga of his malpractice case [Emergency Physicians Monthly, parts seven and eight]
  • Netherlands: site gets sued because of the way Google indexed it [TheNextWeb.com]
  • Phone company faces grievance after disallowing workers’ metal facial jewelry as electricity-conducting risk [eight years ago on Overlawyered]

Cases that could never live up to their headlines dept.

“Inventor of Vibrating Toilet Seat Sues Google Over Allegedly Defamatory Search Results” [Citizen Media Law]

P.S. Also in the news this morning, a less colorful lawsuit against Google over search results: the principals of the New Haven, Connecticut personal injury law firm of Stratton Faxon are incensed that when you search on their firm’s name in Google, you get along with the results an auto-generated ad from a competitive firm.

February 12 roundup

  • Driving through town of Tenaha, Texas? Might be better to get accosted by the robbers and not the cops [San Antonio Express-News via Balko, Hit and Run]
  • Location-tracking Google Latitude application could pose liability problems for unwary employers [PoL]
  • EMTALA law obliges hospital ERs to treat many patients. OK, so how about ELRALA next, for lawyers? [White Coat Rants]
  • New Jersey judge dismisses defamation suit by three women whose picture appeared in book “Hot Chicks with D-Bags” [Smoking Gun, earlier here and, relatedly, here] More: Taranto, WSJ “Best of the Web”, scroll.
  • Myrhvold, often assailed as patent troll, sponsors quote/unquote neutral Stanford study of patent litigation [MarketWatch]
  • Some thoughts on much-publicized tussle between Associated Press and Shepard Fairey over Obamacon photo [Plagiarism Today]
  • Creative uses of immigration law: get that little homewrecker deported [Obscure Store]
  • More than a few real estate lawyers were “hip-deep in mortgage fraud”. Will they tiptoe away? [Scott Greenfield]
  • Roundup on the awful Employee Free Choice Act [PoL]

Why defamation law protects opinion

“Wouldn’t that make for an entertaining factual inquiry: ‘The court finds as a matter of fact that the supermodel is/is not “a skank”‘” (Planet Kauai, Jan. 7). Underlying story:

Canadian model Liskula Cohen has sued Google for a number of snarky remarks that were made by a blogger using the company’s Blogger service. The NY Daily News reports that the former Vogue cover girl has been called ‘skanky’ and ‘an old hag’ by an anonymous blogger on a website called Skanks in NYC (could be deemed NSFW).

(Robin Wauters, TechCrunch/Washington Post, Jan. 7). It should be noted that the site seems to have little purpose but to engage in vitriolic attacks on Cohen, not all of which are as obviously grounded in “opinion” as those quoted. More: ArsTechnica, Bayard/Citizen Media Law.

December 11 roundup

  • Nastygrams fly at Christmas time over display and festival use of “Jingle Bells”, Grinch, etc. [Elefant]
  • Claims that smoking ban led to instantaneous plunge in cardiac deaths in Scotland turns out to be as fishy as similar claims elsewhere [Siegel on tobacco via Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”]
  • Myths about the costs and consequences of an automaker Chapter 11 filing [Andrew Grossman, Heritage; Boudreaux, WSJ] Drowning in mandates and Congress throws them an anchor [Jenkins, WSJ]
  • Mikal Watts may be the most generous of the trial lawyers bankrolling the Texas Democratic Party’s recent comeback [Texas Watchdog via Pero]
  • Disney settles ADA suit demanding Segway access at Florida theme parks “by agreeing to provide disabled guests with at least 15 newly-designed four-wheeled vehicles.” [OnPoint News, earlier]
  • Update on Scientology efforts to prevent resale of its “e-meter” devices on eBay [Coleman]
  • Scary: business-bashing lawprof Frank Pasquale wants the federal government to regulate Google’s search algorithm [Concurring Opinions, SSRN]
  • Kind of an endowment all by itself: “Princeton is providing $40 million to pay the legal fees of the Robertson family” (after charges of endowment misuse) [MindingTheCampus]

Ungoogle me, please

Seattle attorney Shakespear Feyissa was accused of attempted sexual assault while attending Seattle Pacific University in 1998.  He was never charged with a crime and naturally, not convicted.  But since the allegations were covered in the school paper’s online edition they are cached in Google and easily uncovered for anyone who searches his name.

SPU agreed to remove the story from the school paper but when administrators approached the student editors they said no way.  Chris Durr, editor of The Falcon Newspaper said:

We explained to them, if they wanted to start down a path of removing historical archives and pulling it from the public sphere, what they’re doing is censorship.  We basically said, sorry, we have principles in journalism that don’t allow us to put stuff in the memory hole and pretend it never happened.

(“Seattle attorney finds that the Internet won’t let go of his past”, Seattle Times, Aug. 15).

Google AdWords class action

It will come as no surprise to anyone who surfs the Web much that many parked domains and 404 error pages on otherwise active websites carry Google keyword ads. (If you don’t know what a parked domain is, this is one; if you don’t know what a 404 error page is, here’s ours.) It might also seem reasonable that ads in these locations would be glanced at and even clicked on by some non-trivial number of visitors, who will often be looking for information on the relevant topic (that’s the idea behind keywords) and, frustrated in their initial search for content, might be ready to check out an advertiser’s substitute content. However, Boston lawyer Hal K. Levitte professes great dismay and consternation that 15 percent of the $887.67 he spent on his ad campaign went toward placements in such inferior spots, resulting in 693 clickthroughs and no actual conversions to prospect or client status. So he’d like class action status to sue for fraud and unjust enrichment on behalf of all other Google ad customers (Legal Blog Watch, Jul. 16).

P.S. From comments, reader J.B.:

Not sure what’s fraudulent here, when Mr. Levitte set up his ad campaign in Google AdWords he was given the opportunity to specify whether he wanted his ads to appear only on Google search result pages, or also in other places such as these parked domains.

In addition, Google gives you the option to pay less for clicks from these “inferior” spots, because as he found out, they often result in less-desirable visitors.

We in the technology world have a saying for people like Mr. Levitte: “RTFM”