Certainly their appeal should centre on the fact that they've taken the 'offending' page down and yet Google still shows the 'offending' description. Google's cache of the page has an abrupt "Article not available" message and yet the snippet shown still has the previous text.

Interestingly, the live page is quite different to what you see if you try and run it through Google Translate. It seems that Google's IP addresses are no longer welcome. I wonder why...

Bonkers attitudes from all sides, methinks.

That the entire legal profession is populated by bat-guano-sanity-challenged twits....

The whole point of the ... is to highlight a break in the text. How long before we get microsoft ... bankrupt, usa ... bankrupt, <your name> ... <criminal allegation>? My compensation sense is tingling...

In order to avoid a zonking great law suit web site owners now have to check that Google doesn't misrepresent their site in its *generated* summary. I assume that the same also applies to other search engines as well.

Bonkers. Totally bonkers. Judges, like politicians should be kept away from IT like small children are kept away from matches.

Why would any court not say - "see those dots... they mean that this isn't a complete sentence, but two fragments. Case dismissed"

Google

(Now hopefully this comment will show up when "google" and "bankrupt" are used as a search terms)

if the only sanction the court has imposed is to reword the page then its probably not that unreasonable, its often worth looking not just at the guilty/not-guilty bit but what the judge imposes.

I've had a check and can't see so its possible the judge is still about to slap a £10k fine on the original site, but if its as simple as please change the words then whats the big deal?

if you have a series of words on your website, that someone else can rearrange to say something untrue, you are liable?

Is this judge on drugs?

So if I take the local newspaper, cut up an article with scissors, stick it back together so it's then defamatory, can I start throwing lawyers at the author?

Where in one of the theads a garage was being slaged off for being poor, however some recomended another local garage in the same thread and subsequent google searches for garages in that area (not bad or good ones just ones in the area) turned up the page summary with the good garage aparently being called poor.

When the garage reported this to us we deleted the offending thread (it was old), and informed google via their automatic system that that page should be removed from the their cache, it happened within 48 hours. I pressume the speed of this was because we use google analytics so they knew it was the websites admin that was asking for the changes.

In our case it was quickly and easily sorted out with everyone being happy,

[It seems that Google's IP addresses are no longer welcome. I wonder why...]

IP BAN TEH g00gle!1!1!

The two substantive parts of that are surely provided in the search itself? So if they typed in Zwartepoorte NOT bankrupt, would the snippet then still be libellous?

In other words, the libel (if any) comes from the person searching and this is an idiotic judgement. If I choose to skip every other word of a newspaper article and the result is libellous is that my problem or the papers problem?

It establishes a precedent. Other similarly technically-challenged judges might well cite this one as the basis for a judgment, one which might well result in much harsher penalties.

"Also, regarding folding tabloids to create new stories, It's always seemed to me that they do this themselves. Often I've glanced at a paper and seen Public figure X accused of Something Bloody Awful only to notice on closer inspection that these are really two independent stories simply positioned rather unfavourably on the page, the cynic in me suggests these frequent juxtapositions are all about sales."

Tabloid papers are usually more careful than this, as they know the dangers. In extreme cases, and even with regard to completely unrelated stories, there is precedent for juxtapositions between stories on the same page being grounds for libel.

If it is thought that people's concenration span only extends to reading the google summary of a page they found by typing in two or three words into the search box - without actually following the link to see what it actually says - then I now understand why people Twitter. I'd add another sentence along these lines, but I fear losing my readers' atte...

Lawyers are maggots / Judges are flies

The same only older / So why the surprise?

Who's old enough to remember the Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch where the judge had never heard of a digitial watch or a video cassette recorder? This seems to be the problem we have with the legal profession and cases based on technology.

If, for example, a newspaper had misquoted another publication would the judge have found the original publication was at fault? Of course not, but as soon as the internet comes into the case common sense flies out of the window.

Does this mean that all Dutch webmasters have got to look at every possible combination of words on any of their pages and make sure no misleading snippet could be generated if somebody were to type that word combination into Google?

I absolutely agree, but Google could minimise the misinterpretation if it put a couple of newlines in after the ellipsis.

Presumably if this was any different search engine, this ruling would never have happened.

There's a weak argument that this is Google's fault, but when you visit Google and type in your search string, there's no expectation that you will be given anything other than links and summaries (and adverts). The people who got confused simply didn't take the time to understand the tool that they chose to use, and that's their look out.

To decide that this is the website owner's fault implies that Google is a fundamental part of the Internet, which, of course, it is not.

In my experience on three continents I found that most judges wouldn't know which end of the roll, toilet paper comes from let alone understanding newfangled contraptions like the Inter-net and P.C.s. Logic, intelligence or even common sense appear not to be prerequisites for high judicial office anymore, if they ever were.

Anyone who thinks that I'm just lawyer bashing (or who would like to have a chuckle or be shocked or both) is advised to have a squiz at the voluminous legal judgements in Western jurisdictions, which are now freely downloadable. Look at a few from Texas for a start, especially the capital appeals judgements. These guys are not of this earth!

(And if you think our Dutch friend is off with the pixies, have a look at this bird.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3724883&page=1

)

Although the ruling may seem odd, it is perfectly understandable:

1) The website owner represented himself without a laywer

2) The website owner told the judge that technically they would be able to 'fix' the problem by changing their page

As a result the judge ruled that the website owner should fix the problem because he himself said he would be able to do that. Also AFAIK the judge did not rule on guilt, just on fixing it.

If the website owner had used a lawyer, he would probably never have done point 2, and then most likely the judge would have ruled differently. So the person to blame for this ruling is not the judge, but the stupid site owner.

Yes it is stupid to represent yourself but it shouldn't be!

I once represented myself in court for a driving offence. I was guilty and went to court and said so. The judge threw the book at me although it was a first offence. The prosecution didn't look at me once.

Jobs for lawyers, that is about the only thing the legal system is good at! Why should ordinary people have to fork out extortionate rates for lawyers on what should be a simple case.

Careful Jason, if you post comments like that, a search for [Jason Bloomberg Paedophile] may not be flattering search result.

Perhaps you should change your comments to be careful that searches never show up bad results...

A simple, easy and widely documented way to stop search engines (not just Google) indexing any specified page on your site (or, if you're ultra-paranoid, the whole lot!).

Sure, it won't stop it indexing third party pages that link to your site (as in this case), but it could be a useful standby if your company's preferred lawyers are technophobes...

"There are many posters to El-Reg comments ... Most of them complete and utter arseholes, obnoxious freetards, and quite a few paedophiles and baby killers amongst them.

Obviously no one here's going to be offended because it's plainly clear that the second sentence is completely unrelated to the first."

Jason, if your point has any merit, it points to a fault with the way google represents the summary, not any fault with the original website owner.

The problem with robots.txt is that it signals to whomever cares to look, the parts of your site that you consider private.