RIAA/IFPI Explored Possible Lawsuit Against Google For Not Ranking iTunes Above Pirate Bay

Legal Issues

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Over the years we’ve seen a few lawsuits against Google because companies are upset that they don’t rank high enough in search results. Those companies seem to think there’s some sort of legal right to being ranked where they want to be ranked. Pretty much all of those lawsuits have resulted in dismissals. Google’s search rankings are an opinion and thus protected under the First Amendment.

Of course, most of those suing over this are kooks… but apparently a much larger potential lawsuit on this issue has been considered. The IFPI and the RIAA supposedly have asked for a confidential legal analysis concerning the legal issues if they sued Google for sometimes showing unauthorized sites above authorized sites in its search results. In other words, in the mind of the RIAA/IFPI if Google shows The Pirate Bay over iTunes… that must be illegal:

“Google continues to fail to prioritize legal music sites over illegal sites in search results, claiming that its algorithm for search results is based on the relevance of sites to consumers,” the document states.

“With a view to addressing this failure, IFPI obtained a highly confidential and preliminary legal opinion in July 2011 on the possibility of bringing a competition law complaint against Google for abuse of its dominant position, given the distortion of the market for legitimate online music that is likely to result from Google’s prioritizing of illegal sites.”

Of course all of this shows a massive misunderstanding of how Google works. The IFPI seems to honestly think that Google employees are making a conscious choice that “let’s rank these unauthorized sites higher.” They don’t seem to understand how algorithmic search results work.

The fact that no lawsuit has appeared since July suggests that (hopefully) the “legal opinion” explained to the IFPI that any such lawsuit would likely be laughed out of court. Hell they just had to look at the dismissal of the myTriggers lawsuit in September if they wanted to understand why such a legal strategy is destined to fail miserably.

Filed Under: free speech, opinions, rankings, search
Companies: google, ifpi, riaa

How To Make A Mockery Of Your Own Law School: Sue Your Critics

Defamation

from the oops dept

Someone named “tuna” was the first of a few of you to point us to the ongoing debacle that is the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. Apparently administrators there aren’t too happy about the fact that some of its students were not pleased with the school, and gave the school negative reviews online. So, rather than responding to the complaints or figuring out ways to improve, the school filed a lawsuit to determine the identity of four anonymous people online who wrote mean things about the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. One of the anonymous people has filed a motion to quash against the school’s efforts:

“In contrast to their own mission statement, Cooley Law School is now seeking to use its power to stymie the constitutional right of free speech of its own students — albeit speech that negatively portrays the school consistent with other empirical data,” Berkley attorney John Hermann said in the motion, filed on behalf of his client, Rockstar05. “Ironically, Cooley is now the emperor who appears angry at being told he is not wearing any clothes.”

The school itself publicized this particular lawsuit, as well as a separate lawsuit against some lawyers who claimed to be putting together a class action lawsuit against Cooley over (the lawyers claimed) “manipulating post-graduate employment data and salary info.” You can see both complaints embedded below.

I have no idea if the statements made by anyone targeted by Cooley rise to the level of defamation. Certainly many of the statements highlighted could be seen as statements of fact, though many appear to be standard hyperbole from someone who had a negative experience. Still, all of this had me wondering about the Cooley Law School, as I have to admit never having heard of it, so I decided to check it out. The law school’s biggest claim to fame appears to be that it has the largest faculty, and if you count all of its various students, the largest student body as well. Bigger is better! But is the school any good?

Well, that’s where things get hilarious.

You see, if you look at the various rankings for law schools, Cooley is considered near the bottom of the heap. The US News rankings have put it as a “fourth tier” law school, in the past, and currently has it as “unranked” because it apparently “did not supply enough information to U.S. News to calculate a ranking.” But, wouldn’t you know it, according to Cooley itself, it’s actually the second top ranked school in the country, behind only Harvard.

How’s that? Well, you see, Cooley’s administration decided to create its own rankings system! A report from last year (at which point Cooley ranked merely #12 on its own ranking criteria, demolished the way Cooley’s own rankings system works:

How did they arrive at this order? Cooley can only make this claim by sufficiently broadening the number of factors and then allotting them equal weight. Traditionally, highly important considerations are GPA, LSAT, Bar passage rate, and employment upon graduation. However, in this scheme they are given the same weight as Total Volumes in Library, Total Applications, Total Law School Square Footage, Program Achievement Rating Rank.

That blog post then goes on to display how Cooley minimizes the importance of the numbers that actually matter. Meanwhile, it appears that some others were similarly flabbergasted by Cooley Law presenting itself as the 2nd highest ranked law school, based on its own silly rankings. Cooley’s own rankings explanation says that they got rid of pesky things like “reputation,” and declare that, without question, “bigger is better than smaller” (even though, amusingly, in the same list, they claim that smaller class sizes are better than bigger!).

The thing is, I wouldn’t have gone out and learned any of this if Cooley hadn’t decided to jump and sue some of its critics. Even if some of the statements turn out to be defamatory, suing your critics is an open invitation for people to take a closer look at you and what you do, and what comes up for Thomas M. Cooley Law School does not look good at all.

Filed Under: critics, defamation, law schools, rankings
Companies: thomas m cooley law school

Lawyer Ranking Site Avvo Sued By Another Upset Lawyer

Defamation

from the and-avvo-hits-back dept

We’ve seen plenty of stories of review or ranking sites that get sued by people upset about their reviews, but one such site that seems to get extra special attention is Avvo — and that’s because it’s a ranking and review site for lawyers. Soon after the site was launched a few years back, it was sued — leading a judge to dismiss the suit, pointing out that rankings are opinions and opinions are protected by that old First Amendment thing. However, it appears another lawyer is suing the site, claiming libel among other things.

Avvo hit back in a blog post highlighting some history that the lawyer in question, Joe Davis, probably doesn’t want to generate any more attention (such as being “twice convicted and spent eight days in the pokey”) and suggesting that it’s the desire to hide this info that is the real reason behind the lawsuit.

So, how does Davis try to get around the whole “opinion/free speech” thing? Well, he tries to find some factual errors in his profile — such as the page claiming that he practices “100% employment/labor law,” which is apparently not the case. That said, it’s difficult to see how such an error amounts to libel. Also, apparently Avvo has the wrong address, which Davis suggests is a “misrepresentation.” He also claims that Avvo’s “failure to take into account” Davis’ Board Certification (which is mentioned over and over and over and over again in the complaint as if that, alone, conquers all) is a “misrepresentation” as well.

From there, Davis suggests that various fluctuations he saw in his ratings over a period of a few days “obviously occurred based solely” on his “level of participation” on the site, rather than “what is in the public record.” Davis also gets upset that his profile points people to other, competing lawyers, and claims that Google forbids a similar practice. Unfortunately, I believe Davis is simply wrong on this point:

Google’s AdWords’ policies prohibit AdWords users from doing the very same thing that Avvo.com does–that is, to hijack a competitor’s name as a key search word to trigger the appearance of a competitor’s ad next to the competitor’s search results.

But Google actually does allow that and has fought an awful lot of lawsuits that it’s usually won, saying that such a practice is perfectly legal. In fact, Google just recently changed its European policy to have it match the US policy in allowing greater use of trademarked terms in AdWords.

There’s also a suggestion that by using Davis’ photo from his own website, Avvo may have violated copyright and local Florida statutes on using images of lawyers. The full complaint is a bit rambling, and at times rather informal, which makes for some fun reading, but seems like the sort of thing that a judge might not appreciate:

Filed Under: defamation, lawyers, opinions, rankings
Companies: avvo

What Do Amazon's Computers Have Against Fictional Gays And Lesbians?

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the just-wondering... dept

The big controversy of the weekend (there’s always gotta be at least one, it seems) is that people started noticing that Amazon.com started removing books that involve gay or lesbian characters from its sales rankings, and when asked about it, the company initially said that it was excluding “adult” material from certain searches. That struck many as odd, considering that many of the “excluded” books weren’t “adult” at all. After the controversy continued, Amazon changed its story and started claiming that it was actually all just a computer “glitch.” Of course, this sounds remarkably similar to the computer “glitch” Amazon found when it suddenly deleted a bunch of negative reviews of EA’s DRM-encrusted video game Spore. Whether it’s true or not, Amazon is certainly giving off the appearance that it blames any such mistake on a “glitch,” but never seems to provide anything in the way of details to support that.

Filed Under: computer glitch, gay, lesbian, rankings
Companies: amazon