<story><title>Google ordered to pay $500K to Montrealer over links calling him pedophile</title><url>https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/google-ordered-to-pay-500000-to-montrealer-over-links-to-post-calling-him-pedophile</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mdrzn</author><text>The fact that some comments are defending Google is insane to me. My only guess is that they are all from USA and have a very &amp;quot;american&amp;quot; view of things.&lt;p&gt;Google has an ethical and moral responsibility to not allow its platform to be used for defamatory purposes.&lt;p&gt;While Google is an American company, it operates in many countries around the world and should be held accountable for its actions in each of these countries. The issue is not about one country telling another what to do but rather about a company being held accountable for its actions in a particular jurisdiction. The Canadian court system has the responsibility to enforce Canadian laws and protect the rights of its citizens, including the Montrealer in this case.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t agree with that, don&amp;#x27;t offer your service in Canada.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>avsteele</author><text>You probably don&amp;#x27;t believe a library or book store should be sued if they sell a book with defamatory content, so why do you think Google should be here?&lt;p&gt;The connection between wrongdoing by Google is even more attenuated here, since Google is mostly an indexer, with limited curation.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google ordered to pay $500K to Montrealer over links calling him pedophile</title><url>https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/google-ordered-to-pay-500000-to-montrealer-over-links-to-post-calling-him-pedophile</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mdrzn</author><text>The fact that some comments are defending Google is insane to me. My only guess is that they are all from USA and have a very &amp;quot;american&amp;quot; view of things.&lt;p&gt;Google has an ethical and moral responsibility to not allow its platform to be used for defamatory purposes.&lt;p&gt;While Google is an American company, it operates in many countries around the world and should be held accountable for its actions in each of these countries. The issue is not about one country telling another what to do but rather about a company being held accountable for its actions in a particular jurisdiction. The Canadian court system has the responsibility to enforce Canadian laws and protect the rights of its citizens, including the Montrealer in this case.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t agree with that, don&amp;#x27;t offer your service in Canada.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fasterik</author><text>I think your characterization is a straw man. Nobody is arguing that Google shouldn&amp;#x27;t comply with court decisions. The question is what should happen when an individual comes to Google with a complaint, &lt;i&gt;before&lt;/i&gt; they have sought any legal verdict. How is Google supposed to decide whether a claim is true or false? Even if it were their responsibility to determine what counts as defamation, how would we prevent people abusing that system to take down legitimate content they don&amp;#x27;t like? Do we want tech companies making decisions like this independently of the legal system?</text></comment>