What on earth has section 230 got to do with a european citizen's right to protect their personal information? Seems an odd conflation.
FYI – There's a legal storm brewing in Cali that threatens to destroy online free speech
Tech giants and rights groups have flooded the California Supreme Court with a dozen friend-of-the court briefs pleading for the reversal of a defamation ruling that threatens online speech protections. First, rewind to 2013, when a woman by the name of Ava Bird allegedly posted a negative review of San Francisco attorney Dawn …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 20th April 2017 22:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Yelp me out here
"There is a large and growing community of [shitty] businesses and [questionable, unlicensed, and unmonitored] consultants looking for legal tools to shut down online [complaints that only two people see]"
FTFY. Normal businesses, involved mainly with running their business, usually do not give two craps about Yelp reviews; 1) because they are usually positive, and more importantly 2) they are meaningless tributes/gripes where a real review could be, 3) only assholes Yelp, 4) see South Park if you think you want to become a Yelp reviewer, especially if you are unfortunate enough to be a (saggy ass, sad) food critic.
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Thursday 20th April 2017 22:33 GMT a_yank_lurker
Re: Yelp me out here
The 'reputation management' frauds fail to understand the Streisand Effect and human behavior. Suing over an honest opinion runs the risk of a Streisand Effect. The other part is anyone with any sense is always wary of the a new store/provider. People tend to use the same places/providers because they are comfortable. Online reviews are one tool to help make decision but not the only tool. Many use experience, advise of others, 'the smell test', as well as online reviews before making a choice.
'Smell test' is when something does not seem right.
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Friday 21st April 2017 01:56 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: Yelp me out here
Except there is no Streisand effect because nobody ever finds out.
Yelp/Amazon/Ebay just get a million automated emails telling them to remove any negative reviews, which they do rather than be taken to court
You just never see any rating less than 5* on the web anymore
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Friday 21st April 2017 01:51 GMT bombastic bob
Re: Thanks California...
not MY fault - the DemoRats are running rampant and Republicans are outnumbered. They're taxing and spending and regulating us to death, while simultaneously making it easy for their trial l[aw]yer friends and contributors to do all this crap to us...
The Cali-fornicate-you legislature is ONE! OF! THE! MOST! CORRUPT! INSTITUTIONS! ON! THE! PLANET!!! It's like a tin-horn dictatorship these days. And the lyers just throw sueballs around to increase their own income.
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Friday 21st April 2017 02:06 GMT GrumpyKiwi
Re: Thanks California...
I might have agreed with that diagnosis except that even back in the days of Ronald Reagan republican California there were still legally-retarded laws being passed. I'd suggest that it's in the DNA of California to imagine you can legislate your way to happiness.
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Friday 21st April 2017 16:31 GMT Orv
Re: Thanks California...
"Two words: California Emissions."
I complain about CARB rules a lot when I get my car checked, but I have to admit they worked; LA's air quality is visibly better than when I was a kid. So I can only be so critical. Without them LA would probably have Beijing's Blade Runner-esque opaque brown air by now.
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Friday 21st April 2017 03:10 GMT Orv
Re: Thanks California...
You do realize that this was a court ruling, not something passed by the legislature, right?
Likely the whole unfortunate legal precedent would have been avoided if the original client had shown up for court. If they don't show, the court really has little choice but to rule against them.
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Friday 21st April 2017 10:55 GMT Warm Braw
Re: Thanks California...
If they don't show, the court really has little choice but to rule against them
Allegedly, the complaint was notified by "substituted service" - process was supposedly served on a third party who claims not to have seen the target of the lawsuit for several months. The California Courts website says:
“Substituted service” is not a very reliable type of service because the court does not know for sure that the person that had to be served actually received the paperwork.
Perhaps anyone dealing with the Hassell Law Group should be conscious of the possibility of nominative determinism.
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Friday 21st April 2017 08:55 GMT Trilkhai
Re: Lawyers
Only if they're incompetent or don't do their job of representing their client to the best of their ability. Personally, if someone with power & money decided to make my life a nightmare in a way that the judicial system could handle, I'd want a decent lawyer to take my case, not try to argue it myself...
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Friday 21st April 2017 06:16 GMT John Smith 19
"Proper notification of court proceedings is central to our concept of adverse legal process"
As it should be in any country that wants to be thought to have a (reasonably) honest legal system.*
*UK "Super Injunctions" where the defendants did not realize it was happening and had no right to tell their side of the case (often that they had proof the lying scumbag was in fact a lying scumbag).
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Friday 21st April 2017 13:27 GMT ps2os2
Re: "Proper notification of court proceedings is central to our concept of adverse legal process"
This ruling is likened to our FISA Court. Where proceedings are so secret no one but the filing person knows what is going on. While I admit there is a need for the court, I hope it never expands to anyhthing but espionage.
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Friday 21st April 2017 09:19 GMT flayman
"Right to be forgotten" is hardly anything
People quoted in the article massively overstate the implications of the EU so-called "right to be forgotten". It is really very mild. No content is removed as a result of the Google Spain ruling. Only links to content are removed from search results, and then only when the person's name is in the search terms. It's much less invasive than DMCA takedown requests, and Google complies with millions of these and hardly breaks a sweat.
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Friday 21st April 2017 12:42 GMT Steve the Cynic
Indeed. They can, of course, be used as precedent for the treatment of future default judgements, but there's so much of that already, and the established rules are so clear on how they work, that any one new case will have next to zero weight.
(Caveat lector: I'm speaking here as the winner of a default judgement, although later events made it a hollow victory at best.)
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Friday 21st April 2017 10:49 GMT Steve B
Summed up the real problem with "thousands of dollars"
If the process was cheap and affordable or free for the masses then these judgements would be fought, but while it requires "thousands of dollars" it is limited to the rich, who can therefore get away with anything and also rewrite history. After all they must be right because they are rich.
Obviously there is scope for an internet judge judy or whatever whereby an independent panel of internet users review supposed libel actions and decide whether the "review" goes to far. That would open processes up to the masses who cannot afford litigation in any country,
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Tuesday 25th April 2017 17:41 GMT Phukov Andigh
so isn't this the "fallout" of the Facebook Defense
where an online opinion outlet claims "it's a private organization and can choose to block or promote what it wants" and free speech protections are explicitly denied to individuals when that Corporation decides they don't fit Corporate goals?
If free speech rights "don't exist" on their platforms, then they can't really claim that being told to remove content is a violation of free speech laws, can they?
I'm sure there are other legal arguments that would be more appropriate and effective, but as these particular companies can and do modify, edit, and delete user generated content for their own agendas and deliberately tell users to essentially "f**k off we're a private organization and can do what we want" it seems they've already set precedent and denied themselves first amendment protection.