Paris — A French court earlier this month convicted US search engine titan Google and CEO Eric Schmidt for defamation, liable over results from its “suggest” feature, a French legal affairs website has disclosed.
The verdict came as a result of Google’s Suggest function, which brought up terms as you type in a word such as “rapist” and “satanist” when people Googled the plaintiff’s name into the search engine, legalis.net reported.
The plaintiff in this case had been convicted for a three year suspended jail sentence for corruption of a minor, a conviction that was not yet definitive, when he discovered that when one Googled his name, the terms “rapist” and “satanist” appeared in Google’s Suggest feature.
The judgement was made by the Paris high court on Sept. 8. Legalis.net, an aggregator of French legal decisions, has the decision in full. The verdict (translated) said, in part:
“supporting the association of these words is a public defamation of an individual, regardless of the content of articles or documents which refer such requests.”
Machine translated: Ordered to Eric S., in his capacity as editor of the website accessible at www.google.fr to take any action to remove suggestions appearing on the “Google Suggest” requests or proposals made in the heading “related searches” on the attachment of the Google search engine by users of the letters “X …” or “MX …”, the following terms:
- “X. .. Rape “
- “X. .. condemned “
- “X. .. Satanist “
- “X. .. prison “
- “X. .. rapist “
The decision, reported over the weekend in the online edition of Le Monde newspaper, was published in court documents dated September 8 on the French legal web site Legalis. Google confirmed the decision in an email on Saturday.
In its decision, the Superior Court of Paris ordered Google Inc to remove the “harmful” suggestions from the search and make a symbolic payment of 5,000 euros in damages and take necessary measures to ensure they could be no repeat of the offense.
Google has pledged to appeal the ruling, and has said in its defense that the Google Suggest algorithm returns results based on the most common terms used in the past with a query entered. Thus, the company said, it was not Google itself that was making the suggestions. “It is important to point out that Google Suggest is an aggregate of the most popular searches based on past requests from users. Google does not suggest these terms,” the company said in an email.
In February, an Italian court condemned three Google executives of offending Italy’s privacy code, in a case connected to a video posted in late 2006 on Google Video (not YouTube). The uploaded video displayed the bullying of a boy with Down’s Syndrome. Those executives received suspended six month sentences. The court decision came as Google faces demands from Germany’s government to come up with privacy guidelines amid controversy about its Street View service, a virtual tour of cities based on photographs taken in the street.
Original report here (in French).