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Comment by nowaymate | Hacker News Reader

If you're name was at the top of Google as being a Woman beating peadophile and you had tried everything to get rid of it, I'm sure you'd try and get Google to remove it from their index too.

The reputation, career and professional damage can be massive from something like this.

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Dr Janice Duffy, the woman in the article, had many false & libelous statements written about her on a website - in this case being RipOffReport. Per Google's Removal Policy[1], the search engine forces you to contact a webmaster to remove the offending material yourself, or supply a valid court order of defamation. RipOffReport itself only gives you a few options: 1) She could've written a rebuttal to these claims, or 2) Paid off RipOffReport to do an "Arbitration" (extortion).[2]

She also could've sued RipOffReport in addition to Google - but like Google/Reddit/et al, they are protected by the Communications Decency Act in the States - not making them liable for anything users post.

In the end, what she should've done was sue the original authors of those posts on RipOffReport - winning the case (burden of proof is on her), and then having Google de-list the search result.[3]

Taking the third route in using a court order is by far the best way to go.

[1] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1228138 [2] https://www.ripoffreport.com/Arbitration.aspx [3] https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=e...

There are many names that are exact duplicates. Searches that are correct for one person may not be correct for the other, so I cannot see a definitive resolution for the problem.

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