Japanese Court Orders Google To Turn Off Auto-Complete Function

An anonymous reader writes with news that a Tokyo District Court has granted its approval to a petition seeking to force Google to turn off the auto-complete feature for its search engine. "The petition against Google was filed by a Japanese man who claims the feature breached his privacy and eventually led to the loss of his job. According to the man, whose name has been withheld, when his name is typed into the Google search engine auto-complete suggests words associated with criminal behavior. And when those suggested searches are clicked, over 10,000 results are shown that disparage or defame him. According to the plaintiff, this negative Google footprint has prevented him from finding employment since his initial firing several years ago." Unfortunately for him, "Google has rejected the order, saying that its U.S. headquarters will not be regulated by Japanese law, and that the case, according to its in-house privacy policy, does not warrant deleting autocomplete-suggested terms related to the petition, lawyer Hiroyuki Tomita said Sunday."

Different use of URL/Searchs

[RichMan]

A lot of places over there present search terms rather than URL's as references for objects. This is in the majority of advertising. It is wrong, but it is what is commonly done. They have confused address with search. And this is the result

Re:I don't care about the reasons

[Bucky24]

And if they're not planning to turn it off for everyone (which makes sense, some people actually make use of it), at least give others the option to turn it off for just themselves. I personally like autocomplete but I can understand why others wouldn't, and I think we should have the choice.

Re:What goes around comes around

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrest the regional executives. Then Google will change their tune.

I don't agree with the ruling, but that's how these things go down when a company refuses to recognize jurisdiction in a country they have an operational presence in.

Google not ruled by Japanese law? Really?

[Catbeller]

If Google is not ruled by Japanese law, why is every country on earth subject to American law on copyright?

Not only that, but America claims that Americans everywhere on the planet are subject to American law no matter where they are.

Julian Assange and Megaupload would be really surprised to hear about the concept that Japanese laws don't apply to America.

America also maintains that our laws apply to anyone in the world who does business here, even to the limited extent of renting server space on our soil.

Why, that means that America is Really Special and other people's laws don't apply here, and our law applies everywhere. Good to get that out there, fully stated. (Isn't that an empire?)

Seven years?

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

Wouldn't it make more sense for him to change his name rather than put up with the supposed cause of his employment woes for seven years? It sounds suspicious to me. It seems more likely there are other underlying reasons why he gets fired.

But did he commit those crimes?

[ilsaloving]

So wait... Someone with his name apparently committed some crimes that were substantial enough to warrant being memorialized on the internet.

He's not suing for libel or anything, he's suit for invasion of privacy. Does that mean he DID commit those crimes?

There is so much fail in this I don't know where to begin:
-Not hiring someone because of an unsubstantiated internet search
-Suing google, demanding the disabling of a perfectly good feature instead of asking google to somehow adjust their indexes
-(Potentially) committing crimes that get you plastered all over the internet in the first place.

Re:Whaaaaaaaat?

[DarwinSurvivor]

There are only about 7.5B people born every year, it would take 6.2 * 10 ^ 68 years to reach that number. In 1000 years, we'd still only have 10 digit numbers.