search engines – Overlawyered

German court: search engines must deindex reports of 1981 double murder

Walter Olson — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 05:05:26 +0000

In case you were wondering exactly where the supposed “right to be forgotten” leads in Internet regulation:

A convicted murderer in Germany has the right to get all mention of his crime deleted from internet search results under the EU’s “right to be forgotten” provision, Germany’s highest court has ruled.

Let’s hope the United States never decides to follow Europe’s path by restricting speech rights in the name of personal data erasure. [Bill Bostock, Business Insider]

Tags: Europe, free speech, Germany, privacy, search engines

German court: search engines must deindex reports of 1981 double murder is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Google de-ranking and Washington pressure

Walter Olson — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 05:15:38 +0000

After Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California pressured its general counsel at a hearing, Google de-ranked the Russian state media enterprise RT in its search results. As a private company, Google would have been within its rights to arrive at such a decision for reasons of its own. But for it to do so in response to government pressure, as appears to have happened here, poses very real First Amendment problems [John Samples, Cato]

Tags: First Amendment, Google, Russia, search engines

Google de-ranking and Washington pressure is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Bogus-lawsuit “reputation management” scheme comes to grief

Walter Olson — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 05:05:38 +0000

After a push from (among others) Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, one elaborate scheme using dummy litigants and deceptively staged court orders to get Google to de-index some articles appears to have been knocked offline. Eugene Volokh and Paul Alan Levy have been among those recently exposing as fraudulent some practitioners of the art known as “libel takedown” or “de-indexing injunctions.” [Dave Lieber/Dallas News, Volokh in September and related on similar schemes here (takedown request against one of Volokh’s own posts) and here (private default judgment cited in request to Google to deindex government documents), earlier here, etc.]

Tags: Google, online speech, search engines

Bogus-lawsuit “reputation management” scheme comes to grief is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Lawsuits to scrub search engine results

Walter Olson — Sat, 17 Jun 2017 14:45:26 +0000

Eugene Volokh blogs about legal stratagems used to get Google to de-index damaging articles [first, second, third, fourth posts, plus more here and here] More from Paul Alan Levy on the issue of requests based on fictional litigants here and here. Yet more: TechDirt.

Tags: Baltimore, libel slander and defamation, search engines

Lawsuits to scrub search engine results is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

A reputation-scrubbing scheme and its elusive notaries

Walter Olson — Sat, 15 Apr 2017 13:20:56 +0000

Try to track down the notaries who signed on this search-engine-scrubbing scheme as witnesses, and they melt away as if but a dream [Eugene Volokh]

Tags: libel slander and defamation, online speech, search engines

A reputation-scrubbing scheme and its elusive notaries is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Social media “right to be forgotten”

Walter Olson — Sun, 26 Mar 2017 15:57:56 +0000

A First-Amendment-hostile concept pioneered in Europe, the “right to be forgotten,” rears its head in the New York assembly, though it looks unlikely to go anywhere soon [Eugene Volokh, Scott Shackford/Reason, earlier]

Tags: First Amendment, Google, New York, online speech, search engines

Social media “right to be forgotten” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Police roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 04:05:47 +0000

Investigation of problems with no-knock “dynamic entry” police raids [Kevin Sack, New York Times; cf. Radley Balko’s work] But her living room furniture was just sitting there! Why shouldn’t we take it? [C.J. Ciaramella on Mississippi case]
Minnesota judge approves (which doesn’t mean Google will go along with) police demand for all search records on a certain name from any and all users in town of Edina [Mike Mullen, City Pages]
“The L.A. County sheriff wants to release names of 300 deputies with histories of misconduct. He can’t.” [Jessica Pishko, Slate; Tim Cushing, TechDirt (list is of cops considered highly impeachable in court testimony)]
Just catching up with this still-relevant Joshua Muravchik critique of Black Lives Matter [Commentary]
Feds indict seven members of elite Baltimore police gun trace task force on racketeering charges; underlying predicates include robbery, swearing out false search warrants, false overtime claims (“one hour can be eight hours.”) [U.S. Department of Justice, Baltimore Sun, Washington Post]
“New Orleans Police Chief Says He Needs to Hire and Fire Commanders at Will to Protect Reforms” [Ed Krayewski]

Tags: Baltimore, employment at will, Fourth Amendment, guns, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Orleans, police, police bill of rights laws, police unions, search engines, subpoenas

Police roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Free speech roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 11:33:10 +0000

Germany will drop law against insulting foreign leaders, invoked by Turkey’s Erdogan [DW, earlier]
Judge Neil Gorsuch’s opinions and writing draw praise from First Amendment specialists [Ronald Collins, First Amendment Coalition]
“Hey, Google, deindex this whole article because one of the comments harms our reputation.” A tactic ripe for abuse, no? [Eugene Volokh]
ABA model rule defining harassment as professional misconduct violates free speech, says Texas AG [John Mudd, Josh Blackman, earlier on Rule 8.4(g)here, here, etc.]
“CFPB Proposal Unconstitutionally Imposes Prior Restraint on Regulated Entities’ Speech” [Burt Rublin and Daniel Delnero, WLF]
“On punching Nazis” [Ken at Popehat; “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” Spike Jones, 1943]

Tags: bar associations, CFPB, Germany, Neil Gorsuch, search engines

Free speech roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Intellectual property roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 04:05:48 +0000

“Copyright Trolls Now Threatening College Students With Loss of Scholarship, Deportation” [Timothy Geigner, TechDirt]
Use the phrase “Law Firm 2.0”? Better cease and desist [Carolyn Elefant, MyShingle]
“How A Supreme Court Case On Cheerleader Costumes and Copyright Could Impact Prosthetic Hands” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
Have you violated your competitor’s legal rights when you buy search engine advertising with its name as keyword? [Eric Goldman on Edible Arrangements case]
Trader Joe’s keeps battling the Canadian knockoff/reseller Pirate or Irate Joe’s [Lowering the Bar]
“Unified Patents files legal challenges against top three patent trolls of 2016” [Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica]

Tags: copyright, patent trolls, search engines, trademarks

Intellectual property roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

August 24 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 04:05:32 +0000

Ingenious tactic to get bad review off search engines: arrange and win a pretend lawsuit in some other state [Paul Alan Levy, more: followup]
Law professor proposes to give out tax breaks based on race. Constitutional problems with that? [Caron/TaxProf]
$2,250 for the legal right to thread existing barrels: presidential order expands definition of “manufacturer” under arms treaty, which leaves some gunsmiths nervous [The Truth About Guns]
Political corner: Michael Greve reacts to Jonathan Rauch’s Atlantic article, “How Did Our Politics Go Insane?” [Liberty and Law] And for those following my commentary about the Gary Johnson campaign (see earlier), I’ve got a piece at Cato on his rocky relations with conservatives as well as a letter to the editor at the Baltimore Sun;
On Naomi Schaefer Riley’s new book, The New Trail of Tears: How Washington Is Destroying American Indians [Carla Main, City Journal; Chris Edwards]
But which way would the causation run? Econometric analysis finds “EU membership is positively associated with economic freedom.” [EPI Center] Will Brexit promote freer outcomes in areas like agricultural subsidy, or simply a return to national protection? [Simon Lester, Cato]

Tags: Europe, guns, Indian tribes, politics, search engines, taxes

August 24 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system