Train 4 Trade Skills

THE TRUTH
 IT IS NOW COMMON PRACTICE TO CHECK
INFORMATION USING AT LEAST THREE
SEPARATE INTERNET SOURCES TO ENSURE
ACCURACY AND INTEGRITY.
 Train 4 Trade Skills
and the Internet
In recent years, the Internet has become an open forum for individuals
to express their opinions about everything from bank charges to hotel
and travel reviews. The most vocal and regular contributors on
websites and forums are usually those complaining about a product or
service in a one-sided attack, leaving the door closed for other party to
respond.

Train 4 Trade Skills, like many other companies, has been at the
receiving end of a complete mix of internet coverage, both negative and
positive, some biased, some deliberately defamatory and much of it
inaccurate.

During the past year our IT specialists investigated the root of some of
the less fair criticism. Our efforts uncovered competitors who were
setting up scams to discredit us, fake students who had their own
agenda for damaging our image and it also revealed a smear campaign
by the Association of Heating and Plumbing Contractors, who released
a vindictive and highly libellous press release that they were instructed
by Google to retract. Not before damage to our credibility was done.

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 Here is a summary of some of the websites and attacks which we
removed from the internet in recent months:-

Defamatory
1. MoneySavings Expert
6th February – 27th June 2008

This website contained a dialogue of lengthy and inaccurate information about the disadvantages
of distance learning for trade courses.

Different training organisations, individuals and competitors joined in the dialogue, alleging ‘fast
track’ training and corner cutting.

In March 2008, ATL, who provide the workshop training for Train 4 Trade Skills, posted a detailed
response explaining that students receive at least the same amount of hands-on training as
conventional apprentices.

The website was removed after further inaccurate and defamatory comments.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=727919

Defamatory
2. http://forum.learnplumbing.org/showthread.html?t=133
Defamatory and inaccurate postings were made and later withdrawn by the forum.

Defamatory
3. http://www.plumbingmadeeasy.co.uk/posts/
train4tradeskills/subject=8E901F1419BB28BD69D59D6F97B10B19
Offensive comments made about Train 4 Trade Skills. Removed by the author.

It Is Now Common Practice To Check Information Using At Least

4
Three Separate Internet Sources To Ensure Accuracy And Integrity
Deception

4. Association of Plumbing and Heating Contractors - ‘Rogue Trainers’

The content of up to 20 websites was removed, after these sites ran a press release issued by the
Association of Plumbing and Heating Contractors (APHC) and distributed by on online PR server,
criticising Train 4 Trade Skills’ training methods.

The release was biased, inaccurate and libellous, wrongly quoting training methods and techniques.

APHC accused Train 4 Trade Skills of being ‘Rogue Trainers’ and maintaining that the only way to
train plumbing skills was the old apprenticeship route.

Government statistics have proved that so many young people taking this route abandon their
training through lack of stimulation (doing menial tasks for jobbing plumbers) and lack of
willingness to attend college. The APHC allegations were totally unfounded.

They were banned from continuing to use the release and asked by their lawyers and Google to
retract all releases issued, from all websites publishing it, which included:-

http://www.journalist-association.eu/archive/news.php?newsid=8459
http://prnewswire.netpr.pl/PressOffice/PressRelease.98553.po?print_version=true
http://www.pressemeldinger.no/read.asp?RecNo=49196

Unfounded
5. http://www.learnelectrics.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4122
Negative postings were made about Train 4 Trade Skills. These were subsequently removed.

It Is Now Common Practice To Check Information Using At Least

5
Three Separate Internet Sources To Ensure Accuracy And Integrity
 Unfounded
6. Certforums
January – August 2008

This forum site published another lengthy debate about the merits of home study vs. the traditional
apprenticeship route.

Once again, many comments were ill-educated and uninformed, and a large number were clearly
from competitors, or plumbers who resented today’s trainees having a more practical and
appropriate way to learn their skills.

http://www.certforums.co.uk/forums/archive/index.php/

Deception
7. Other forums & Websites

During 2008 several other forums and websites started dialogues, or published references to ‘fast
track’ methods of training, inferring Train 4 Trade Skills’ ‘blended training’ approach was corner-
cutting and skimping on essential skills.

These forums were quickly removed and more balanced content replaced individual ‘gripes’ and
opinions, particularly those which made any reference to the APHC ‘rogue traders’ allegations.

Examples of the references to ‘fast track’ methods of training included:

Deception
8. http://www.homediyman.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=442
Thread contained inaccurate information about hands-on training. Posts later removed.

Deception
9. http://www.homediyuk.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3991
User was banned following repeated inaccurate postings.

It Is Now Common Practice To Check Information Using At Least

6
Three Separate Internet Sources To Ensure Accuracy And Integrity
 Google
Negative Publicity
n Privacy group files FTC complaint against Google Buzz.

n Watchdog calls for tighter Google privacy controls. Citizens across the world
are being forgotten.

n Google refuses to rule out face recognition technology despite privacy rows.
Google has recently been criticized about its attitude to privacy.

n Google's Street View under fire. A FORMAL complaint has been made about Google's
new mapping service by privacy campaigners.

n Google guilty of privacy crime in web test case. A judge in Milan imposed
suspended prison sentences on men who allowed the postings of a video clip which
featured the bullying of an autistic child.

n Google executives convicted for Italy autism video.

n Google's Buzz 'Has Serious Privacy Flaws'.

n Google hit with job discrimination lawsuit.

n Google accused of ageism in reinstated lawsuit. A 54 year old employee of Google

was fired after being told you are too old to matter.

n Google Book Search Lawsuit Settled, Fair Use Questions Remain: Settlement
proposes Book Rights Registry.

n Google Removing Agence France Presse From Google News. Search giant to
drop French news agency after copy-infringement complaints.

n Google Postpones Mobile Phone Launch After China Dispute. Foreign

Journalists' Gmail Accounts Targeted by Chinese Hackers.

n Gmail Disaster: Reports Of Mass Email Deletions.

Google Negative Publicity
 Google Negative Publicity

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/feb/15/google-buzz-privacy-issues

Privacy group files FTC complaint

against Google Buzz
Epic asks US Federal Trade Commission to step in and require Google to make Buzz a 'fully opt-in service'
Despite making significant changes to its Buzz social networking service (and apologizing), Google still can't shake
the ire of privacy critics. The electronic privacy information group has now filed a complaint with the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) over Buzz, asking the FTC to step in and require Google to make Buzz a "fully opt-in service"
and to "cease using Gmail users' private address book contacts to compile social networking lists". (Via LA Times).
Epic says that while Google has turned off an "auto-follower" feature, so that users now have to manually approve
the people whose updates they follow, the company is still making suggestions based on who users contact the most.
"Google Buzz still allows people to automatically follow a user," the foundation says. "The burden remains on the
user to block those unwanted followers." It also says that Google doesn't make clear that the profiles Google Buzz
users are required to set up are public.
In a statement, Google says: "Buzz was launched only a week ago. We've already made a few changes based on user
feedback, and we have more improvements in the works. We look forward to hearing more suggestions and will
continue to improve the Buzz experience with user transparency and control top of mind."
The reaction to Buzz has similarities to the criticism that has followed some of Facebook's moves to make more of
its users' information public; indeed, in mid-December, several privacy groups filed a complaint with the FTC over
recent changes Facebook had made to its privacy settings.
Google, however, seems to have learned at least one lesson from Facebook's privacy troubles. Two years ago, it took
Mark Zuckerberg nearly one month to apologize for his company's controversial Beacon program. By contrast, it
took Google six days to do the same.

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Google Negative Publicity

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/apr/20/google-privacy-controls

Watchdog calls for tighter Google

privacy controls
Citizens across the world are being forgotten

Information commissioner joins Germany, Canada and Spain in demanding search giant protects its users more
n Paul Harris in New York
n guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 April 2010 22.29 BST
Britain's privacy watchdog has joined senior government officials from nine other countries to push Google to adopt
stricter privacy controls.
Christopher Graham, the UK's information commissioner, has joined countries including Germany, Canada and Spain
in signing a letter challenging Google to protect its users more.
The letter, addressed to Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, claimed the concerns of citizens across the world were
"being forgotten" as Google introduces more and more products. It followed problems with Google Buzz, a social
networking application that triggered a storm of protest when it was launched and automatically connected people
via their email accounts. Google was forced to quickly change Google Buzz to allow users more choice in who would
be in their networks.
"It is unacceptable to roll out a product that unilaterally renders personal information public, with the intention of
repairing problems later as they arise," the joint letter said. It added: "We call on you ... to incorporate fundamental
privacy principles directly into the design of your new services."
The letter then listed six areas where Google should strive to do better, including only collecting the minimum amount
of personal information on users of its services, telling users how that information will be used and making it easy for
people to delete their accounts and protect their private data. The letter reflects growing fears in some quarters about
the power of Google. The search engine has a self-declared mission to make all information in the world searchable
but that has run up against numerous privacy or copyright issues. Its Google Books project to put the world's books
online has outraged many in the publishing industry. Its Google Street View project also caused negative headlines
by capturing images of people in public as Google cars roam the streets and then put the resulting images up on the
web.
In an official response a Google spokeswoman said the firm was already very sensitive to the privacy issue and vigilant
over the concerns of its products' users. "We try very hard to be upfront about the data we collect and how we use it,"
she said. The spokeswoman added that the company would not be responding to the letter. "We have discussed all
these issues publicly many times before and have nothing to add to today's letter," she said.
Google insiders suggested that, in fact, the company complies with the suggestions contained in the letter and that it
had been an unnecessary attack. But the issue is clearly a highly sensitive one for a company whose unofficial corporate
motto is "don't be evil" but is now getting increasingly bad press about privacy and its global ambitions and dominance
of the internet. In the US yesterday Google released comments it had made to the Federal Trade Commission about
privacy concerns. The firm said it would support self-regulatory standards and even a federal privacy law that would
establish "baseline privacy protections".

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 Google Negative Publicity

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1280145/Google-facial-recognition-debate-goggles-privacy-
controversy.html

Google refuses to rule out face recognition

technology despite privacy rows
Google has recently been criticized about its attitude to privacy

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 1:42 PM on 21st May 2010

Google has refused to rule out extending controversial facial recognition technology, despite being hit by a storm of
complaints over privacy.
The internet search giant already offers one facial recognition feature through its Picasa photo software, which scans
your pictures and suggests matches with other pictures that may include the same people.
Google's CEO Eric Schmidt would not rule out a further roll-out, saying: 'It is important that we continue to innovate.'
Google already enables users to search through their photo albums using face recognition technology.
However, he said the decision to introduce facial recognition on a wider basis would not be taken lightly.
'Facial recognition is a good example… anything we did in that area would be highly, highly planned, discussed and
reviewed,' he told the Financial Times.
With facial recognition a face is detected and tagged by the user. It is then rotated so that the eyes are level and scaled
to a uniform size and compared with all the other pictures on the user's database. The system then displays any close
matches.
There are fears this technology could be added to the Google Goggles tool, which was launched last year. This currently
allows people to search for inanimate objects, like the Eiffel Tower, on the internet by taking a picture of it on a mobile
phone.
However, if combined with facial recognition software, customers could use it to identify strangers on the street.
In theory this could make it very easy to track someone's private information down just by taking a picture of them.
Google's Picasa tool groups similar faces together. CEO Eric Schmidt said they would carefully consider whether to
roll out face recognition further.
When Goggles was launched in December 2009, spokesman Anthony House, said: 'We do have the relevant facial
recognition technology at our disposal. But we haven't implemented this on Google Goggles because we want to
consider the privacy implications and how this feature might be added responsibly.
'So if someone uploads a picture of a stranger on Goggles there is no process to identify them and the search will
come up with "no matches found."
'We will have talks with privacy advocates and consumers before we consider any changes - it may be people want
such a service, but we don't have a rigid timescale on when any decisions will be made.'
Google has recently been criticised about its attitude to privacy. Just this week the company admitted that its Street
View cars had inadvertently collected browsing data from unsecured wireless networks.
The company also had to make hasty changes to its software after its Buzz Communications tool revealed personal
details of users without their permission.

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Google Negative Publicity

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2337817.ece

Google's Street View under fire

A FORMAL complaint has been made about Google's new mapping service
by privacy campaigners.

By VIKKI THOMAS
Published: 24 Mar 2009

Privacy International has lodged the protest with the Information Commissioner over claims people can be identified
through the Street View service.
The application allows users to access 360-degree views of roads and homes in 25 British towns and cities and includes
photographs of millions of pictures of people and cars.

Sophisticated technology has been developed to obscure the faces of people featured in Street View photographs, and
car registration plates have been blurred, but this has failed to satisfy critics.
Scores of pictures, including one of a man exiting a Soho sex shop and another of a man being sick on the pavement
outside a pub in Shoreditch, were removed from Street View on Friday, a day after its UK launch.
But the service has proved a hit with intrigued British internet users.

Blurred
Google Maps UK received one in every 250 UK internet visits on Friday, with onsite traffic rising by 41 per cent,
web monitoring firm Hitwise claimed.
The firm added that US Google Maps posted an 84 per cent increase in visits as British web users began checking out
places in America.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) confirmed they had received a complaint from Privacy International.
Richard Thomas said: "What we have been saying for some time - over the last few days - is that it is Google's
responsibility to make sure that the images that they use are blurred satisfactorily.”
"If anybody is not happy with an image that they see then they should contact Google and get it taken down."
A Google spokeswoman said on Saturday that the number of removal requests had reached the "hundreds", but it had
been "less than expected".
She said that when Street View was announced for the UK the company had explained its easy-to-use removals process
for images people found "inappropriate" by simply clicking to report a concern and report the image.
Most images had been removed within hours of receiving a request and users could request car number plates to be
more effectively blurred or images of their homes removed, she said.

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 Google Negative Publicity

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/google-guilty-of-privacy-crime-in-web-test-case-
1909915.html

Google guilty of privacy crime

in web test case
A judge in Milan imposed suspended prison sentences on men who allowed
the postings of a video clip which featured the bullying of an autistic child

By Michael Day in Milan and Robert Verkaik

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Three Google executives were convicted yesterday in a landmark privacy case that critics said could severely curtail
internet freedom.
In what privacy experts described as a "chilling ruling", a judge in Milan imposed suspended prison sentences on the
men who he said were criminally liable for allowing the posting of a clip on Google's video service which featured
the bullying of an autistic child.
Google's senior vice-president and chief legal officer, David Drummond, the former Google Italy board member
George De Los Reyes and global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, were all found guilty of violating the boy's privacy.
The senior product marketing manager Arvind Desikan was acquitted. Legal experts said the case had worrying
implications for all internet service providers and other hosting platforms which do not create their own content such
as YouTube and Facebook.
During the trial the prosecutors accused Google of negligence, saying the video remained online for two months,
even though web users had already posted comments asking for it to be removed. But Google argued that it had
complied with the law by taking it down when contacted by the Italian authorities and assisted prosecutors in bringing
those responsible to court.
In recent months the censorship of Italian websites has become a controversial issue following a spate of hate sites
against officials, including the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
But some experts fear that the case could have much broader implications. Last night Richard Thomas, the former
Information Commissioner and consultant to the privacy law firm Hunton & Williams, told The Independent that the
case was of grave concern to both internet users and service providers.
"Whether it is a one-off case or precedent-setting ruling, it will send reverberations around the whole world," he said.
"This ruling is simply inconsistent with the way the internet works. There is no UK data law or European law that I
know which could lead to this result, where employees of a company are sentenced to suspended jail sentences for
being personally criminally liable for the uploading of a video clip in this way."
Andy Millmore, head of litigation at the media and entertainment law firm Harbottle & Lewis, said: "This ruling has
major implications for internet service providers, potentially making them automatically liable for the first time for
what others post on sites they own. If upheld, it will make it theoretically possible to pursue sites for hosting content
which has not been posted with the express permission of the people featured."
The case arose in late 2006 when students at a school in Turin filmed and then uploaded a video that showed them
bullying an autistic schoolmate. The complaint was brought by the boy's father with an Italian advocacy group for
people with Down's syndrome, Vivi Down, although the boy had autism, not Down's.

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Google Negative Publicity

The Italian public prosecutor greeted the verdict as a victory for individuals over corporations. "A company's rights
cannot prevail over a person's dignity. This sentence sends a clear signal," the lawyer Alfredo Robledo said outside
the Milan courthouse.
Last night Google said it hoped to overturn the verdicts on appeal, while the convicted executives issued their own
statements. Mr Drummond said that the verdict set a "dangerous precedent".
The complaints of the Google executives are likely to fall on deaf ears in Italy, however. Sympathy for the victim was
already running high this week following the emergence of an Italian group on Facebook calling for children with
Down's syndrome be used for "target practice".
The Equal Opportunities minister, Mara Carfagna, said: "Italy will not tolerate incidents of discrimination of any sort,
let alone against the disabled," and added: "Those responsible for creating this idiocy will be prosecuted." Facebook
operators in the US shut the group down soon after.

The model: How it makes $23.6bn

n An analyst once described Google as an advertising business which has a good line in search results. Revenues hit
$23.6bn in 2009, with 97 per cent coming from advertising. Every time there is a search on its site, an almost
instantaneous auction is carried out, with an advertiser paying from a few cents to tens of dollars. Google's
algorithms then place the adverts on its site.
n Most of this is done through AdWords, Google's ad system, which allows any company to create adverts at a low
cost and make sure those adverts are tied to certain keywords. When those words are typed in, the company's
advert will run next to the search results.
n The rest of Google's advertising revenues come from AdSense, which sells adverts on third-party sites. Of the 3
per cent of revenues not generated from ads, most come from providing branded email systems and other corporate
tools to companies.

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 Google Negative Publicity

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61N2G520100224

Google executives convicted for Italy

autism video
(Reuters) - A Milan court convicted three Google Inc executives on Wednesday for violating the privacy of an
Italian boy with autism by letting a video of him being bullied be posted on the site in 2006.
Google, which will appeal the six-month suspended jail terms in Italy, also heard that European Union antitrust
regulators were looking into complaints about it from three online firms.
Google said it was confident it would avoid formal investigation by the European Commission.
It said the Milan verdict "poses a crucial question for the freedom on which the Internet is built" as none of its
employees had anything to do with the video.
"They didn't upload it, they didn't film it, they didn't review it and yet they have been found guilty," said Google's
senior communications manager, Bill Echikson, in Milan.
The U.S. embassy in Rome backed Google, saying in a statement that it was "disappointed" by the decision and
seeming to draw an analogy with limits on Internet freedoms in China.
"We disagree that Internet service providers are responsible prior to posting for the content uploaded by users," it
said. "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made clear on January 21 (with regard to China) that a free Internet is an
integral human right that must be protected in free societies."
The court convicted senior vice-president and chief legal officer David Drummond, former Google Italy board member
George De Los Reyes and global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer. Senior product marketing manager Arvind Desikan
was acquitted.
The executives, none of whom are based in Italy, do not face actual imprisonment as the sentences were suspended,
while an appeals process in Italy can take many years.
They were not in Italy for the hearing. Drummond is based in California, Fleischer in Paris and Desikan in London,
while De Los Reyes has since retired, Echikson told Reuters.
Google plans to discuss the ruling with European policy makers, a person close to the company told Reuters, as was
first reported in the Wall Street Journal.
The complaint was brought by an Italian advocacy group for people with Down's Syndrome, Vivi Down, and the
boy's father, after four classmates at a Turin school uploaded a clip to Google Video showing them bullying the boy.
Vivi Down was a plaintiff because it was named by the boys in the video, a lawyer for the group said. But Google's
Echikson and the prosecutor said on Wednesday the boy had autism, not Down's as widely reported during the three
years of the case.
"A company's rights cannot prevail over a person's dignity. This sentence sends a clear signal," public prosecutor
Alfredo Robledo told reporters outside the Milan courthouse.
The video was filmed with a mobile phone and posted on the site in September 2006.

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Google Negative Publicity

"THREAT TO NET FREEDOM"

Google argued it removed the video immediately after being notified and cooperated with Italian authorities to help
identify the bullies and bring them to justice.
It says that, as hosting platforms that do not create their own content, Google Video, YouTube and Facebook cannot
be held responsible for content that others upload.
Drummond said in a statement the verdict "sets a dangerous precedent" and meant "every employee of any Internet
hosting service faces similar liability." He said the law was clear in Italy and the European Union that "hosting
providers like Google are not required to monitor content that they host."
Fleischer said if employees were "criminally liable for any video on a hosting platform, when they had absolutely
nothing to do with the video in question, then our liability is unlimited."
The prosecutors accused Google of negligence, saying the video remained online for two months even though some
Web users had already posted comments asking for it to be taken down.
Censoring of Websites has become a hot issue in Italy in recent months, following a spate of hate sites against officials
including Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The government briefly studied plans to black out Internet hate sites after fan pages emerged praising an attack on
the premier, but the idea was dropped after executives from Facebook, Google and Microsoft agreed to a shared code
of conduct rather than legislation.

"NO HINT OF GUILT"

Google counsel Julia Holtz said the scrutiny by EU antitrust regulators "in all likelihood ... will not go anywhere. The
Commission has not expressed any hint of guilt."
The Commission can fine companies up to 10 percent of their revenues and has imposed billions of euros of fines on
Intel Corp and Microsoft Corp for breaking antitrust rules, although it was far too early to say if Google could be
fined.
Google said British price comparison site Foundem and French legal search engine ejustice.fr had complained its
search algorithm demoted their sites in results and Microsoft-owned Ciao from Bing had complained about its terms
and conditions.
Google has 90 percent of the global search market compared with 7.4 percent for Yahoo Inc and Bing combined,
according to November data from research firm StatCounter. The company has drawn increasing regulatory scrutiny
as it has grown.

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 Google Negative Publicity

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Technology/Google-Buzz-Utility-Has-Serious-Privacy-Flaws-
According-To-Users/Article/201002215547473?lpos=Technology_Article_Related_Content_
Region_7&lid=ARTICLE_15547473_Google_Buzz_Utility_Has_Serious_Privacy_Flaws_According_To_Users

Google's Buzz 'Has Serious Privacy Flaws'

5:04pm UK, Wednesday February 24, 2010
Ed Merrison, Sky News Online

Users of Google's new social-media utility 'Buzz' are claiming it could allow
anyone to see who they have been emailing.
The world's number one search engine claims Buzz allows users to "share updates, photos, videos, and more".
But users have discovered that unless privacy settings are changed, Buzz publicly shares details of users' contacts.
When creating a new account, a dialogue box asks you to create a profile and upload a photograph.
Buzz then automatically builds you a buddy list based on names in your Googlemail account.
But it then makes this list public on your profile, by default.
It is a bit like someone being able to peek inside your email folders - and users who spotted the flaw are astounded.
"In my profession, where anonymous sourcing is a crucial tool, the implications of this flaw are terrifying," said Buzz
user and journalist Nicholas Carson writing for Business Insider.
"Google should just ask users, 'Do you want to follow these people we've suggested you follow, based on the fact you
email and chat with them? This will expose to the public who you email and chat with most'."
In response, Google moved to tweak the sign-up process and now claims the opt-out option for a public list is clearer.
"We think that showing followers publicly by default makes Buzz more useful because it helps people expand their
networks," they said in a statement.
"In response to feedback, we've made the option to hide these lists more prominent in the set up process."
But Nicholas Carson responded: "We continue to believe these chances to opt-out do not force the user to make a real
choice about this setting.
"Google could and should simply make this feature 'opt-in' so that people know what they're doing."

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Google Negative Publicity

http://news.cnet.com/Google-hit-with-job-discrimination-lawsuit/2100-1030_3-5807158.html?tag=nl

Google hit with job discrimination lawsuit

By Dawn Kawamoto
Staff Writer, CNET News
July 27, 2005 12:31 PM PDT
A former Google sales executive has filed a lawsuit against the search giant, alleging it engaged in job discrimination
while she was pregnant with quadruplets. Christina Elwell, who was promoted to national sales director in late 2003,
alleges her supervisor began discriminating against her in May 2004, a month after informing him of her pregnancy
and the medical complications she was encountering, according to the lawsuit filed July 17 in a U.S. District Court
in New York.
Job discrimination lawsuits are nothing new for corporate America, even for companies like Google, whose founders
built a company with the motto "don't be evil."
Google and attorneys for Elwell did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment. According to the lawsuit,
Elwell's supervisor, Timothy Armstrong, Google's vice president of national sales, became concerned about her
inability to travel for several weeks due to complications with her pregnancy. And in May 2004, he allegedly showed
Elwell an organizational chart, in which her position had been deleted and asked her to accept a position in Google's
operations department.
But Elwell, who also lost two of her four unborn children that month, told Armstrong she viewed the position as a
demotion and one that would not require any of the sales skills she acquired over a 15-year history. Within a week of
this discussion, Elwell's proposal to move from being a national sales director to an East Coast regional sales director
was rejected by Armstrong, who appointed a salesman that Elwell had previously trained and who had no Internet
sales experience, according to the lawsuit.
"Armstrong called Elwell into his office and told her that she was an HR nightmare and that he no longer wanted her
in the New York office," according to the lawsuit, noting Armstrong allegedly expressed concern that Elwell was
discussing her situation with co-workers and views that her pregnancy was the reason for his actions.
A day after meeting in his office, Armstrong called Elwell on the phone and fired her, saying she "did not understand
the direction the company was taking and that she had spoken to others," according to the lawsuit.
After meeting with an employee in Google's human resources department in mid-June 2004 to discuss her severance
package, Elwell received an e-mail from Google executive Shona Brown who offered to reinstate Elwell to the
operations position. But also in the e-mail, Brown allegedly accused Elwell's husband of "acting under false pretences
by telling Google that Elwell was having a health crisis," according to the lawsuit.
After Google's director of human resources, Stacy Sullivan, contacted Elwell and told her she had been terminated
improperly, Elwell accepted the operations position, even though she viewed it as a demotion.
On June 29, Elwell lost the third child of the unborn quadruplets. Two days after Elwell's return to work on July 19,
she was ordered by doctors to "remain out of work due to the stressful circumstances created by Google and Armstrong,
which were putting her already high-risk pregnancy at further risk," according to the lawsuit.
Elwell went on disability leave, and while on leave gave birth to the remaining quadruplet.
On Aug. 18, the day before Google's long-awaited IPO debuted, Elwell filed a discrimination complaint against the
company with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Elwell returned to work in January, following maternity leave, and was informed she would have to take the "low-
level operations position" that was offered prior to her disability leave, rather than a sales position. She refused to
accept the job and was discharged from Google, according to the lawsuit.

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 Google Negative Publicity

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071006/google_old_071006/20071006

Google accused of ageism

in reinstated lawsuit
A 54 year old employee of Google was fired after being told you are too old
to matter

The Associated Press

Date: Saturday Oct. 6, 2007 7:27 PM ET
SAN JOSE — A 54-year-old former Google Inc. manager who claimed he was fired after a supervisor told him his
opinions were "too old to matter" had his age discrimination lawsuit reinstated.
Reversing a Santa Clara County trial judge, the state's Sixth District Court of Appeal ruled Thursday that Brian Reid
deserves to have a jury hear the evidence he amassed that he says shows Google routinely gave older managers lower
evaluations and smaller bonuses than younger managers.
"Reid produced sufficient evidence that Google's (stated) reasons for terminating him were untrue or pretextual, and
that Google acted with discriminatory motive such that a fact-finder would conclude Google engaged in age
discrimination," Presiding Justice Conrad L. Rushing wrote.
The Mountain View-based search engine company has denied Reid's allegations but also refused to say why he was
fired. In court documents, the company said Reid was fired when the program he managed was cancelled.
Reid, a former associate electrical engineering professor at Stanford University, sued Google in July 2004, five months
after he lost his job as its director of operations.
He alleged in his suit that his supervisors did not initially tell him why he was being fired. Director of Engineering
Wayne Rosing, 55, eventually said he was not a good "cultural fit" at Google, where some colleagues referred to him
as an "old guy" and "fuddy-duddy," Reid said.
Another supervisor, Urs Hoelzle allegedly said Reid, who is a diabetic, was too sluggish and "too old to matter" and
his ideas were obsolete.
Reid is seeking back pay and punitive damages. He made $200,000 a year and lost stock options valued at millions
of dollars when he lost his job.

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http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1828

Google Book Search Lawsuit Settled, Fair

Use Questions Remain : Settlement
proposes Book Rights Registry
By Sherwin Siy on October 28, 2008 - 7:54pm
It’s been announced today that HYPERLINK "http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/" Google has settled
the massive lawsuits filed against it by a series of publishers and authors for its Book Search program. The program
had scanned in tons of books into a database, making public domain works available online to the public, while
providing a searchable database of copyrighted books that would display only snippets of text to the searcher. (The
current text of the proposed settlement agreement is here.)
The lawsuit was based on the publishers’ and authors’ contention that Google was infringing their copyrights when it
scanned copyrighted books from libraries into its database. This scanning made digital reproductions of the work,
and displaying small snippets displayed the works-both of these being exclusive rights of a copyright holder. Google,
on the other hand, argued that these activities were non-infringing or fair uses-since the searched database didn’t harm
the market for the original works, and the published snippets were short enough excerpts.
In any case, this settlement doesn’t go to the merits of these arguments, meaning that anyone else trying to do what
Google did will face the same legal battle all over again. Instead, the questions of law remain unsettled, the lawsuit
goes away, and several other things happen:
n Google pays out at least $45 million to copyright holders whose works were scanned and displayed without
permission;
n Google continues to scan works into its databases; public domain works are online in full; copyrighted,
commercially available books won’t be put online without permission; and copyrighted books that aren’t
commercially available will be online in “preview” form, with a few selected pages visible;
n Users can buy access to the books that Google has digitized;
n Institutions can buy access to the digitized out-of-print books from Google;
n A cut of Google’s revenue from these sales goes to copyright holders;
n Google funds a registry, to be run by publishers and authors, that will distribute royalties from the digital use of
books to rightsholders.
There’s a lot to be debated in this settlement (and it should be noted that this is the agreement that the parties in the
suit have agreed to—it still needs to be approved by the court), but let’s first note what it doesn’t do: make a
determination as to what is or isn’t fair use.
Depending on how you saw the merits of the case, and how confident you were in the court reaching the right decision,
that can be good or bad. On the one hand, we don’t have a federal court saying that scanning books is a per se fair
use; on the other hand, we don’t have a court saying that scanning is per se infringement, either.
This does mean that the financial and legal might of Google is no longer going to be aligned with libraries and archives
that may wish to provide digital services that are technologically similar to Google’s efforts. This will mean that
further fair use fights for digital libraries start closer to square one than they would have otherwise.
But it doesn’t prevent other digital innovators from making use of, or fighting for, their fair use rights. Nor, for the
more cautious technologists, would it mean that they can’t negotiate licenses with individual authors or industry
groups.

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But while the legal landscape isn’t altered too much by the settlement, the practical landscape could be. Rightsholders
and other potential plaintiffs might view this settlement as the model for all future relationships with digitization
efforts—if Google pays for digitizing, why shouldn’t everyone else? Such a landscape might make a plaintiff more
likely to sue, although the results in court, ideally, shouldn’t differ, with or without this settlement in place.
One of the things that this settlement will do, however, is include millions of authors in the body of works subject to
Google scanning. Since the lawsuit was a class action, and the plaintiffs were certified as representing the whole class
of affected people (that is, authors whose books are scanned as part of Google’s library scanning program), an author
who doesn’t want to give up the right to sue Google or a library for the scanning program would have to opt out of
the settlement agreement. For those authors who don’t, the remaining remedy would be to contact Google and tell
them not to display the work in the database. This may raise some hackles down the road-there’s often problems
surrounding the idea of a smaller group of plaintiffs presuming to speak for a much larger class of people. Hopefully,
it won’t stand in the way of increased access.
One of the interesting things about the settlement is how it draws the distinction between books that are in-print and
out-of-print (actually, the lines in the settlement are most often drawn between being “commercially available” or
not—a distinction worth noting for later discussion). This is an important distinction for practical matters of accessing
works, but one not so explicitly present in copyright statutes (there is an extremely limited recognition of this difference
in some of the section 108 library exceptions). As a practical matter, it seems much more reasonable to make a copy
of a work if there’s no way for me to obtain it from a bookstore. Yet this might not save me from being found an
infringer under fair use, given a sufficiently litigious plaintiff and a sufficiently unsympathetic court. After all, even
if there are no other copies of the book available, there’s a potential market in licensing the right to make a copy of
the book.
Which is why it’s refreshing that this distinction is drawn at all in the agreement, and in what will be available to
users. This sort of arrangement can be cited as a positive feature of licensing and the power of contract—the ability
to draw distinctions that matter to the parties that the law doesn’t recognize.
Of course, there are distinct drawbacks to contract, too. Contract is a two-way street, where each party gives up
something of value to the other. But that means that contract isn’t a town square or a commons; the interests of those
not party to the contract are often ignored. Here, the large number of people outside the agreement—other potential
digitizers, consumers, and authors who opt out of the settlement-will have to deal with some of those consequences.
One of the biggest of these is the creation of the Book Rights Registry. As set out in the settlement agreement, this is
to be a non-profit organization, initially funded by $34.5 million from Google, that will administer licensing rights
and disburse payments to authors and publishers who sign up. The idea is that Google will be able to get the rights to
use authors’ works from this Registry, and pay them for those rights, which will flow to the authors. This would seem
to be available to anyone who wants to license the digital rights to the books, and not just Google.
In essence, this is sort of like an ASCAP, BMI, or SoundExchange for books—a convenient place to license works
and immunize oneself from suit. Of course, that also can bring some problems with it—there’s no shortage of
complaints about existing rights management organizations from both licensors and members. One common complaint
is how the organization deals with funds paid to it for artists that aren’t members, or what happens to funds that aren’t
properly distributed. And the Book Rights Registry is a privately created entity, with no specific statutory restrictions
upon it, the way that other rights management organizations tend to have. So it may be harder for a potential licensee
to challenge royalty rates that it finds unfair.
Obviously, there’s a great deal of nuance and detail in the 141 pages of the settlement (and the hundreds of pages of
attachments); and there are further details in how the Book Rights Registry will be set up later. Further nuances are
going to be present in how all of this interacts with libraries (those that do and don’t already have deals with Google),
other digitizers like the Open Content Alliance, authors and publishers who are and aren’t represented by the plaintiffs
in this case, and the general reading / library-going / Internet-using / book-buying public. The drama of this settlement
may take up a bit of this week’s already-busy news cycle, but its effects will be felt and analyzed far into the future.

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http://www.pcworld.com/article/120125/google_removing_agence_france_presse_from_google_news.html

Google Removing Agence France Presse

From Google News
Search giant to drop French news agency after
copy-infringement complaints.

Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News

Mar 21, 2005 11:00 pm
Google is in the process of removing French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP) from its Google News service,
which aggregates links to online articles and accompanying photos from about 4500 news outlets.
Google's decision is a direct reaction to a lawsuit AFP filed against the search engine provider alleging copyright
infringement over the inclusion of AFP content in Google News, said Steve Langdon, a Google spokesman, on
Monday.
Google doesn't have a timetable for when all AFP links and content will be removed from Google News, but the
company is actively working on the matter, Langdon said.
"We allow publishers to opt out of Google News. Most, however, want to be included in Google News because they
believe it's a benefit to them and their readers," Langdon added, reading from a prepared statement.

Background
AFP sued Mountain View, California-based Google in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday
of last week. The news agency is seeking to recover damages of at least $17.5 million from Google. AFP also asks
the court to forbid Google from including its content in Google News.
An AFP spokesman in the agency's North America headquarters in Washington, D.C., declined to comment on the
lawsuit. A copy of the complaint is available online.

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http://abcnews.go.com/International/google-china-dispute-grows-hacking-claims/story?id=9599223

Google Postpones Mobile Phone Launch

After China Dispute
Foreign Journalists' Gmail Accounts Targeted by Chinese Hackers

By BETH LOYD
BEIJING, Jan. 19, 2010
Google has postponed the launch of its mobile phone in China amid a dispute with the government about Internet
censorship.
The formal launch of the phone scheduled for Wednesday was postponed, Google spokeswoman Marsha Wang said,
declining to give a reason or say when it might take place.
The postponement came a week after Google announced it was considering pulling out of China after discovering
that it had been the target of cyber-attacks aimed at accessing e-mail accounts of human rights activists in China and
abroad.
At least two Gmail accounts of foreign journalists in Beijing, including one at Associated Press television, have also
been hacked, according to the Foreign Correspondents Club of China.
The group said that the journalists' e-mails had "been forwarded to a stranger's address," and warned that "journalists
in China have been particular targets of hacker attacks in the last two years."
Google is also reportedly investigating whether the cyber-attacks were facilitated by someone within Google's China
offices. Google is not commenting on the allegations of an "inside job."
Some experts say that Google employees could have unwittingly participated in the hackings by being victims of the
cyber-attacks themselves. Local Chinese media reported that some Google China staff members had been denied
access to internal networks and other employees had been transferred to other offices in the Asia Pacific region.
Dan Brody, Google's first employee in China who now runs an Internet media investment company here, is sceptical
of the reports of an inside job. "This was a public attack. Code is written to run a huge number of servers," Brody
said. "This sort of hacking doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the code."

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http://techcrunch.com/2006/12/28/gmail-disaster-reports-of-mass-email-deletions/

by Michael Arrington on Dec 28, 2006

Gmail Disaster:
Reports Of Mass Email Deletions
Just a week after I wrote “Uh Oh, Gmail Just Got Perfect” a number of users started complaining that all of their
Gmail emails and contacts were auto deleted.
The first message, posted on the Google Groups forum on December 19, stated “Found my account clean..nothing in
Inbox, contacts ,sent mail..How can all these information residing in different folders disappear? ..How to write to
gmail help team to restore the account..is it possible?..Where to report this abuse?.Any help ..Welcome..Thanks in
advance ps101”
Other Gmail users then added to the conversation, saying that their emails had been deleted as well. Most of the users
reported using Firefox 2.0 and that Gmail was open in their browser when the deletions occurred.
The cause of the problem isn’t clear. One user wrote that after the deletion they received the following message: “This
is not a mistake. All your emails and contacts have been deleted on purpose. This was a malicious attack and not an
error. Have a nice day. =)” One user pointed to a known security issue with Firefox 2.0, which was fixed in 2.0.0.1.
On December 22, four days after the initial incident was reported, a Google representative posted this message on the
thread:
Thank you all for reporting this issue. We apologize for the scare and
inconvenience that it’s causing. We’re actively investigating as we
speak, and we’ll follow up individually with users in this thread as we
get to the bottom of the problem.
We appreciate your patience and understanding.
Google’s official policy is that once emails are deleted, they are gone forever. And based on the Google Groups thread,
no one has been able to have their Gmail accounts restored to pre-deletion status.

Update: A representative from Google just sent the following email:

Hi there TechCrunch folks,
We saw your post today about Gmail and wanted to let you know what was going on.
Regretfully, a small number of our users — around 60 — lost some or all of their email received prior to December
18th. Once we found out about this issue, we worked day and night to confirm that only a few accounts were affected
and to do whatever we could to restore as much of the users’ accounts as we could. We’ve also reached out to the
people who were affected to apologize and to work with them to restore the email from any personal backup they
might have.
We know how important Gmail is to our users – we use it ourselves for our corporate email. We have extensive
safeguards in place to protect email stored with Gmail and we are confident that this is a small and isolated incident.
Thanks,
Courtney

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Negative Publicity