The Paris court found the function to be defamatory and ordered the symbolic payment of one euro and 5,000 euros (6,700 dollars) in costs for the plaintiff. The amount is immaterial. Google was correct in noting that it does not pick these terms and that the function merely tracks the common terms of users. If such a function is defamation, it could shutdown a great variety of such functions on the Internet.
I have long been a critic of European defamation laws (here and here and here and here) as setting too low a standard for plaintiffs. This case, however, shows both a lack of understanding of such functions as well as the dangers of low defamation standards to free speech. Previously, Google was hit with a defamation lawsuit in Italy.
Fortunately, Google will appeal this ill-conceived decision. In the interim, as I prepare to go to Paris next month for a speech, I will have to remove all of the adjectives out of the text.
If you read French, here is the decision.
I do not read French, but on its face I find the decision to be nonsensical and maddening. The lawsuit is protecting the plaintiffs not from defamatory statements from Google but the collective association of users. Part of the transformative role of the Internet is the use of such functions to combine searches and information from users. In the United States, Congress and the courts have moved to protect such companies from defamation. In some cases, they have gone too far in my view, but this case shows the danger of the opposite trend among our European cousins. Of course the ultimate revenge is that now, when you type in France, “runaway courts” and “Internet-challenged” will come up on the suggest function.
Source: Yahoo
Jonathan Turley