On the search engine side, there's been a couple of solid court decisions in the United States:
- In SearchKing vs. Google, a company sued because it didn't like its rankings/PageRank. SearchKing had been selling links that passed PageRank, which violates Google's quality guidelines. The court determined that "PageRanks are opinions - opinions of the significance of particular web sites as they correspond to a search query. Other search engines express different opinions, as each search engine's method of determining relative significance is unique. The Court simply finds there is no conceivable way to prove that the relative significance assigned to a given web site is false." As a result, Google was entitled to "full constitutional protection" for its opinions.
- In KinderStart.com vs. Google, a company sued Google over a lower ranking. The judge not only dismissed that case, he allowed sanctions against KinderStart's counsel for making various claims (like Google skewing results for political/religious reasons) that couldn't be proven.
So in the U.S., we have a couple very nice court cases that establish that search engine rankings are opinions and protected speech. If someone tried to sue over a set of search results, I believe they would find that a very hard case to make.
Of course, things like libel and defamation apply online as well as offline.
Is it possible to simply ignore completely pointless attacks by lawyers? It boggles my mind that it should be possible to essentially mount a DoS against any person by unleashing lawyers on them. That is, why can other people force me to spend time and braincycles on their insanity?
You can ignore them right up until they file an actual case - if you continue to ignore it after that, you will lose the case by default and be subject to whatever penalty they or the judge decide to levy against you.
(IANAL, this ain't legal advice, don't take legal advise from random Russians on the internet.)
That's the legal structure in the U.S. It's not insanity until you go to court and explain to a judge why it is, and he agrees with you and dismisses. $10,000 later. This is a sideeffect of your right to sue other people when you think you have a case.
I figure eventually we'll have to deal with lawsuits from monied interests as a very real threat to freedom of speech.
The ability to sue anyone for anything at any time will become mutually exclusive with the right to speak publicly without fear of government enforced persecution. We'll have to look at our founding principles and decide what's most important to us. The current patent mess does not leave me optimistic.
Eventually? That, or the threat of it, is the daily reality if you write or publish, and has been since long before there was an internet. The libel suit against me (http://www.credentialwatch.org/legal/null.shtml) was as frivolous as they come, but that didn't mean it wasn't a major disruption. It can happen to anyone: the complaint against me cited comments on websites like this one as well as my actual articles.
Another comment mentioned SLAPP: only some states have SLAPP legislation. Generally, no matter how frivolous the action, you still need to defend against it in court, and that is a major project that will displace much of what you'd rather be doing (unless you are very wealthy).
You convolve three separate things: legal persecution by private parties, government persecution, and the patent system.
I agree. We need to recognize that increased efficiencies in personally-initiated communication are tearing apart the old truce between personal and commercial interests.
Search rank losses can't "be" libel. They could, theoretically, be damages caused as the result of libel. In order for something to be libelous though, it must be false, and in such a way that an average person could believe it. Satire is not libel. Writing about how you don't like Pepsi is not libel. I don't believe Pepsi could successfully sue you for expressing an opinion about their product, no matter where it ranked in Google's search results. I doubt their lawyers would even try. Of course IANAL, etc, etc.
Is it feasible for one party to successfully sue another for the decisions made by Google, a third party? Is there another example where this currently occurs?
One way to look at it is that Google is making decisions about ranking. Another way is that an algorithm doesn't count as a "decision", but crafting specific inputs that change Google's ranking algorithm's output in a known way is actionable.
The article's conclusion states 'are search rank losses the new libel?' when the current state of affairs is that page rank losses can be the consequence of libel which is clearly actionable under current laws as Matt_Cutts mentions...
Doesn't the situation the author is describing fall somewhat into the domain of SLAPP lawsuits? Maybe not quite, but there seems to be some overlap there.
- In SearchKing vs. Google, a company sued because it didn't like its rankings/PageRank. SearchKing had been selling links that passed PageRank, which violates Google's quality guidelines. The court determined that "PageRanks are opinions - opinions of the significance of particular web sites as they correspond to a search query. Other search engines express different opinions, as each search engine's method of determining relative significance is unique. The Court simply finds there is no conceivable way to prove that the relative significance assigned to a given web site is false." As a result, Google was entitled to "full constitutional protection" for its opinions.
- In KinderStart.com vs. Google, a company sued Google over a lower ranking. The judge not only dismissed that case, he allowed sanctions against KinderStart's counsel for making various claims (like Google skewing results for political/religious reasons) that couldn't be proven.
So in the U.S., we have a couple very nice court cases that establish that search engine rankings are opinions and protected speech. If someone tried to sue over a set of search results, I believe they would find that a very hard case to make.
Of course, things like libel and defamation apply online as well as offline.