14 DAY TRIAL // The results from a previous lawsuit between Vogue cover-girl Liskula Cohen and Google have spawned new troubles for the Mountain View-based company. Rosemary Port, a fashion student in New York, has sued Google for breaching its privacy policy and disclosing personal information to a third party.
The timeline of all the events started a couple of months ago, when Mrs. Port published a post on her Blogger page (the Google blogging platform) in which she made various defamatory remarks regarding Liskula Cohen.
After Mrs. Cohen had come across that blog post, she immediately sued Google for concealing the identity of the blog owner and tried to force the corporation to reveal the blogger's details. She won a landmark case against Google and forced the company to breach its privacy policy disclosing the identity of the person that made those derogatory posts.
Immediately after her identity was made public, Mrs. Port sued Google for 15 million dollars for privacy policy breach. She claimed that Google miserably failed to protect her right to privacy and anonymity, bringing her stress and unwanted public exposure.
Regarding Google's decision to make her profile public, Mrs. Port said that “My right to privacy has been violated. Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me.” Commenting on the dispute with Mrs. Cohen, she added that “This has become a public spectacle and a circus that is not my doing. […] By going to the press, she defamed herself. [...] Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my Web site: One from me looking at it, and one from her looking at it."
"We sympathise with anyone who may be the victim of cyberbullying," the Mountain View-based company said in a statement. “Google takes great care to respect privacy and will only provide information about a user in response to a subpoena or other court order.”