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Speaker 1: Let's say someone tells a lie about you, and let's

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Speaker 1: say that lie is all over the Internet, easily findable

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Speaker 1: through a Google search. If you get a court order

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Speaker 1: finding it to be defamatory, Google will consider removing the

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Speaker 1: web pages from its indexes so that Google users won't

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Speaker 1: see those pages in search results. The logic is that

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Speaker 1: a court order is pretty good evidence that the material

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Speaker 1: is defamatory. But things aren't always so simple the simple.

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Speaker 1: The system is replete with gray areas, and it increasingly

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Speaker 1: seems abuse. I don't I know this because I've been

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Speaker 1: reading the Vola Conspiracy, where u c l A law

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Speaker 1: professor Eugene Volk has been writing about the issue of

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Speaker 1: d D indexing for months. He is with us here today. Eugene, welcome,

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Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us US, Thanks thanks for having me on.

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Speaker 1: It's it's a fascinating story and I've been digging into

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Speaker 1: it and just so many different aspects, so many different

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Speaker 1: ways that people can do things that are fraudulent or

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Speaker 1: borderline fraudulent. Well, well, let's start with the legitimate thing.

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Speaker 1: Is the whole gist of this? Uh, you know what

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Speaker 1: Google is doing? What's what's why are they doing this

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Speaker 1: at all? Why why do they even bother trying to

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Speaker 1: take down some some are de indec somewhere web pages. Well,

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Speaker 1: Google has no legal duty, or at least that seems

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Speaker 1: very like there's some controversy, But basically I'm pretty confident

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Speaker 1: Google has no legal duty to d index material, to

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Speaker 1: remove it from its indexes and therefore from search results,

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Speaker 1: just because it's supposedly defamat or even found to be defamatory,

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Speaker 1: because it's not the author of the material and it

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Speaker 1: has a statutory immunity from a liabel lawsuit. But it's

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Speaker 1: a view is that the right thing to do, right

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Speaker 1: uh with respect to the legal system, right with respect

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Speaker 1: to UH the victims of defamation, and right with respect

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Speaker 1: it's viewers who or its users who want accurate information,

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Speaker 1: is once something is found to be defamatory, hey, well

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Speaker 1: at least seriously consider hiding it from search, essentially excluding

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Speaker 1: it from search results. The problem is that these findings

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Speaker 1: have and in other lawsuits who are plaintiffs sus some

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Speaker 1: defend and then sends a copy of the orders to Google.

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Speaker 1: And it's possible that this process of getting these orders

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Speaker 1: u UH contains either contains various kinds of misconduct that

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Speaker 1: makes them highly unreliable. Eugene, let me ask you this.

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Speaker 1: Suppose there's a settlement in a libel suit or a

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Speaker 1: defendant signs a document saying he lied. Can the plaintiff

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Speaker 1: get a cord to issue an order to get those

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Speaker 1: articles taken down from the web? And then does do

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Speaker 1: Google and other Internet search engines have to take it down?

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Speaker 1: So the answer is that they the plaintiff can get

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Speaker 1: a court order against the defendant, whether because he wins

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Speaker 1: a lawsuit, or because the defendant settles the case and

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Speaker 1: stipulates the liability, or because it was a default judgment

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Speaker 1: that they tried to serve the defendant but couldn't find them.

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Speaker 1: But that order is only binding on the defendant. It's

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Speaker 1: not actually binding on Google. It's not binding on hosting

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Speaker 1: providers like WordPress. Still, as a matter of good citizenship,

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Speaker 1: they tend to respect those orders. The problem is some

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Speaker 1: of the time there's actually was just a criminal complaint

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Speaker 1: to federal criminal complaint unsealed uh in once this case yesterday.

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Speaker 1: Some of the time would gets sent to Google is

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Speaker 1: a forgery. Some people basically forge a court order to

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Speaker 1: send it to Google. Some of the time it's a

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Speaker 1: real court order. But they sue what appears to be

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Speaker 1: a fake defendant, get a stipulation from that fake defendant,

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Speaker 1: which is to say, they themselves submit the stipulation on

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Speaker 1: behalf of the fake defendant, get this real court order

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Speaker 1: because the judge figures a you know, if both sides agree,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to sign the court order, send it to Google.

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Speaker 1: Even if Google checks the court records, they see it's

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Speaker 1: a real court order. But there was no real meaningful

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Speaker 1: litigation and no real meaningful decision about whether material really

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Speaker 1: is indeed liabel us. And that's just the tip of

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Speaker 1: the iceberg. There are lots of other scams I've seen,

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Speaker 1: for example, forged notarizations, where there is a real Excumely

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Speaker 1: they're trying to show there is a real defendant, but

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Speaker 1: there's the notarization the defendants supposed the signature is forged. Eugene.

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Speaker 1: One context that you've been discussing on your blog involves

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Speaker 1: old newspaper articles, and one situation involves a newspaper story where, uh,

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Speaker 1: somebody recanted what they said there, but the paper hadn't

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Speaker 1: or the news outlet hadn't taken down the story. Can

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Speaker 1: you tell us about the case the case of Megan

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Speaker 1: Walter that you are so some years ago, the Megan

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Speaker 1: Walter made the news as a cheerleader for I believe

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Speaker 1: the Arizona Cardinals, but cheerleader who had been before a

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Speaker 1: soldier fighting in Iraq. And those are kind of a

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Speaker 1: nice story. Good looking women who fight for their country.

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Speaker 1: How much better can you get them? That? So everybody

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Speaker 1: like that. And then though she made the news a

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Speaker 1: second time because supposedly she had assaulted her then boyfriend,

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Speaker 1: one Ryan McMahon. And this is an all the news,

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Speaker 1: I mean really mainstream sites, uh like Fox News, like

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Speaker 1: various other network affiliates, various sites and the like. And

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Speaker 1: then she went to court filed a lawsuit against Ryan

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Speaker 1: Ryan McMahon. We don't know for sure if it was

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Speaker 1: the Ryan McMahon, but let's assume that this was and

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Speaker 1: the and there was a stipulation where Ryan McMahon said, yes,

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Speaker 1: what I said, my accusations against her were false, and

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Speaker 1: therefore liabelius. She says, ah ha, that means that I

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Speaker 1: can get this court order that lists all these stories

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Speaker 1: that are based in his accusations as filtered to the

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Speaker 1: police report actually and get those stories declared libelous and

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Speaker 1: then submit them for d indexing. Now to be sure,

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Speaker 1: I don't to my knowledge, Google didn't actually act on that,

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Speaker 1: because I think it's so through that that you can't

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Speaker 1: just say, well, because we have a stipulation from a

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Speaker 1: source who recants his statement, now everybody has to take

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Speaker 1: this down because then the question was he lying then

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Speaker 1: or is he lying now? And the right thing to

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Speaker 1: do is to send it to the media publications and

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Speaker 1: let them use their editorial judgment to decide whether to

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Speaker 1: trust the original allegation more or to trust or recantation.

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Speaker 1: War But the plaintiff there was trying to short circuit

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Speaker 1: this whole process and get um all of these news

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Speaker 1: stories vanished, to get them thrown down the memory hole

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Speaker 1: on the strength of this rather dubious settlement. Eugene, you

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Speaker 1: wrote about an actor exonerated of sexual assault who was

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Speaker 1: trying to get the articles about the accusation to vanish,

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Speaker 1: and in a certain sense, I feel bad for this

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Speaker 1: guy who was exonerated and has all these articles up there.

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Speaker 1: Is there anything that he can do or should he

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Speaker 1: not be allowed to? So I totally um uh your

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Speaker 1: position of that. I feel bad for him too, especially

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Speaker 1: as to the original accusations. Interestingly, though, he was trying

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Speaker 1: to get vantished, not just the original accusations, the articles

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Speaker 1: of quote the original accusation, but even the articles that

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Speaker 1: came out when he was exonerated. I guess his thinking

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Speaker 1: is better not to have been ever accused, or thought

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Speaker 1: to be never to have been accused of to be

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Speaker 1: known to have been a accuston and exonerated. But still

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Speaker 1: these were actually pretty legitimate and accurate stories about it.

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Speaker 1: He'd been accused in the exonerated he wanted them to vanish.

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Speaker 1: Now I should say that could not involve any fraud.

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Speaker 1: He got an actual statement from a prosecutor basically more

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Speaker 1: or less describing his exoneration. He got his records expunged

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Speaker 1: so for government purposes they don't count anymore. And then

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Speaker 1: he submitted to Google, essentially asking Google to d index.

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Speaker 1: There was an article in the Daily Mail, British newspaper,

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Speaker 1: an article on the website of PIXE eleven, a television

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Speaker 1: station in New York, some celebrity news articles asking them

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Speaker 1: to the index stuff. Again, I don't think Google paid

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Speaker 1: attention to that, because I think they recognized that there

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Speaker 1: was no finding of a libel on anybody's part. But

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Speaker 1: I I can see why he was doing it. It's

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Speaker 1: just that I don't think there should be a situation

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Speaker 1: where basically accurate news articles, especially ones that accurately report

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Speaker 1: on the exoneration, just vanished down the membery. We're gonna,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna have to leave it there. Thank you. As always,

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Speaker 1: one of our favorite guests, Eugene Vallach of u c

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Speaker 1: l A Law School