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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: 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!