04/04/08 Articles Privacy, Publicity, and Defamation

Go-Daddy pulls cop ratings site
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/GoDaddy-Pulls-Plug-On-CopRating-Website-92554

Go-Daddy pulled a site that allowed people to rate and view officers in the area. They did not give an offical reason why. One representative said that it was because of "suspicious activity" while another said that the site was simply being viewed too much. The privacy policy does include Go Daddy's ability to shut down sites if they defame people among other reasons.

This case can be seen as an invasion of privacy of the cops who patrol the areas. They are being rated by those who have no power to rate their performance. These kinds of ratings could greatly hurt the the performance of the cops in the area if people realize that some areas are more laxed on security.

Defamed Lawyer
http://www.lvrj.com/news/17123421.html

David Rivers, a Las Vegas lawyer, sued the Las Vegas Tribune for defamation for an article that they printed saying that Rivers was a drunk and beat his wife. It would be okay for the newspaper to print this but it is not true and Rivers is suing for a million dollars in damages. Rivers admitted to have a bad past but thie accusations have been unproven.

This is a simple case of character defamation. The newspaper printed a story that they have yet to prove and as such Rivers have to right to sue the Tribune for all the damage caused by esentially thier careless reporting.

Google and privacy protection
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9909637-46.html

Google is being critized for their current privacy policy. Google uses users search inquires to improve results, but in order to do that they have to catalogue the inquiries and as such can see what people have searched for thus intruding on the privacy of the users. Thier G-mail email service is also unprotected. The encryption technology casts too much to accounts can be easily broken into.

This focuses on the invastion of privacy of the users of Google. All the users can have thier searches looked into by anyone in the Google network and as such have embarassing searches come back to protentially haunt them. Regardless personal information can still be potentially seen by those who have no right to see it. The same thing applies to their Gmail service and how information can be invaded.