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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: 2) by RaffArundel on Tuesday July 22 2014, @01:08PM
First, for me, is word of mouth and then reviews. The problem with online reviews is that most of them are amateurs and amateurish. As a result they typically only exist when someone is angry/venting about something or a fan[whatever]. There is also an issue with paid reviews and the haters. Like you, I look at the worst/lowest rated reviews and see if whatever they are bitching about would actually bother me.
I think the entire thing (especially special punishment for search engine placement) is stupid, since no one disputes the fact that she was there and got poor service. But I am reminded of the recent issue with "girl not being served because she was horribly scarred" which apparently turned out to be false and ultimately damaging to all involved. My concern is the definition of "harming another party" used to justify the emergency hearing and fining her. So, assuming she didn't spin the story, it is true and harms the restaurant, more so now - what happens to the blog post, the fine and the overall chilling effect it has on honest negative reviews?