[ NNSquad ] Australian Court Finds Google Guilty of Deceptive Ad Tactics

[Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>]

Australian Court Finds Google Guilty of Deceptive Ad Tactics

http://j.mp/HbTq12  (PC Mag)

    At issue are sponsored links that show up in search results. "Google's
    conduct involved the use by an advertiser of a competitors name as a
    keyword triggering an advertisement for the advertiser with a matching
    headline," ACCC chairman Rod Sims said in a statement. "As the Full
    Court said this was likely to mislead or deceive a consumer searching
    for information on the competitor."

 - - -

I can't emphasize enough how potentially dangerous this sort of
reasoning is to free speech on the Net generally. If courts are going
to hold search engines responsible for the content of materials that
they do not themselves generate but that their algorithms select and
display, the negative impacts could ultimately go far beyond ads,
directly to other forms of content broadly. These are just the sort of
perverse restrictions that various repressive individuals,
organizations, and governments would love to impose on us all to
control and dictate information availability.
 
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren 
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org 
Founder:
 - Data Wisdom Explorers League: http://www.dwel.org
 - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org 
 - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
 - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com 
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren / Twitter: http://vortex.com/t-lauren 
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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