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from the justice-is-blind,-and-sometimes-stupid dept.
The BBC reports that:
A French judge has ruled against a blogger because her scathing restaurant review was too prominent in Google search results. The judge ordered that the post's title be amended and told the blogger Caroline Doudet to pay damages.
Ms Doudet said the decision made it a crime to be highly ranked on search engines. The restaurant owners said the article's prominence was unfairly hurting their business. Ms Doudet was sued by the owner of Il Giardino restaurant in the Aquitaine region of southwestern France after she wrote a blogpost entitled "the place to avoid in Cap-Ferret: Il Giardino".According to court documents, the review appeared fourth in the results of a Google search for the restaurant. The judge decided that the blog's title should be changed, so that the phrase: "the place to avoid" was less prominent in the results. The judge sitting in Bordeaux also pointed out that the harm to the restaurant was exacerbated by the fact that Ms Doudet's fashion and literature blog "Cultur'elle" had around 3,000 followers, indicating she thought it was a significant number.
"This decision creates a new crime of 'being too highly ranked [on a search engine]', or of having too great an influence'," Ms Doudet told the BBC. "What is perverse, is that we look for bloggers who are influential, but only if they are nice about people," she added.
The judge told Ms Doudet to amend the title of the blog and to pay Euros 1,500 ($2,000; £1,200) in damages to the restaurant, as well as Euros 1,000 to cover the complainant's costs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Tuesday July 22 2014, @04:48AM
This must be some sort of abuse of power. I realize the French Common Law system is different, and better in some ways (not precedent based), but doesn't an actual law need to have been broken? Is this something that is actually on the books or is it the equivalent of a 'civil suit'?
(Score: 4, Informative) by jelizondo on Tuesday July 22 2014, @06:47AM
The French code is based on Roman Law and the Napoleonic Code; "Common law" refers precisely to precedent based law, such as found in England and the U.S.
But even in the Roman Law based systems, there is juriprudence, which means, interpretation of the law can be shaded by previous rulings, but only of higher courts, such as Apellate Courts (for district courts) or the Supreme Court, for everyone.
Not nitpicking, just informing you.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:53AM
Thanks, I actually knew the first part, well, the Napoleanic Code part, not the Roman part, but it was late. The legal system of Quebec here in Canada is based on it as well. Thanks for the correction!
(Score: 2, Informative) by tonyPick on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:10AM
So, reading up on this, it looks like this was some sort of emergency order, intended to be used ahead of an actual hearing in order to limit damage while the court process goes ahead
From the BBC (TFA)
Which isn't so unreasonable on the face of it, assuming there's an actual hearing (which it doesn't sound like will be the case here).
However in that context the damages and costs award is the more worrying/chlling part, and I wonder if it was related to:
Ouch.