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French Blogger Fined over Review's Google Search Placing

posted by janrinok on Tuesday July 22 2014, @03:16AM   
from the justice-is-blind,-and-sometimes-stupid dept.

cafebabe writes:

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.

• Unclear to me (Score: 2, Informative) by pkrasimirov on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:48AM

  by pkrasimirov (3358) on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:48AM (#72188)

  From TFA:

  Under French law, a judge can issue an emergency order to force a person to cease any activity they find to be harming the other party in the dispute.

  The summary decision is intended to be an emergency measure to protect the person deemed to be a victim and can be overturned or upheld if the parties go to a full hearing.

  In order to issue the order under French law, the judge has only to identify a wrong on the defendant's part, a negative effect on that of the appellant and a causal relationship between the two.

  Ms Doudet said she did not believe she will appeal because she did "not want to relive weeks of anguish".

  Ms Doudet added that, because the decision was taken at an emergency hearing, she did not have time to find legal representation, so had represented herself in court.

  So is it a preliminary order until full trial OR case-closed order and she can appeal? Anyway, the part of "she did not have time to find legal representation" seems to me that she didn't mind the decision much anyway. Like mhajicek said above, Streisand effect would bash them a lot more. Plus a sudden surge in popularity for the defender.

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