Saturday, July 19, 2014

French blogger fined over restaurant review's Google search placing

Wrong on so many levels:
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.
Wrong to sue. Beyond that, wrong to sue the blogger if you're going to sue. Beyond that, wrong ruling despite the first two wrongs.

Hope the SCOTUS isn't getting any ideas from this about how they can defend religious corporations from bloggers here ...


Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...