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Jenzabar Says That Google Blog Post Is 'Hearsay', Not Official Google Statement
from the good-luck-with-that dept
Last month, we wrote about the highly troubling efforts by the head of software firm Jenzabar to abuse trademark law to stifle criticism of that company's founder and CEO (who, earlier in her life, was famous for "leading" part of the student uprising in Tiananmen Square). She was upset at the makers of a documentary film that was somewhat critical of her, and she tried to use trademark law against them, after an attempt at defamation failed. There is simply no trademark violation at all in this situation... but it is a company with lots of cash suing some independent documentary film makers, so it has all the appearances of filing a lawsuit just to cause trouble for the filmmakers.
Our posts were based on some blog posts by Public Citizen, criticizing Jenzabar and its founder/CEO Ling Chai. Rather than recognizing that it's going too far, Jenzabar apparently decided to go on the attack. Public Citizen's Paul Alan Levy alerts us to the news that Chai and Jenzabar are now claiming that Public Citizen's blogging about the case is illegal.
Specifically, the complaint from Jenzabar is that Levy pointing out that Google has stated that it does not use metatags in its search algorithms is not admissible and will "cause prejudice," because it is not an official statement from Google. That, of course, is silly. Google has made it clear for a while that it doesn't use metatags, but this particular announcement came from Google's Matt Cutts (disclaimer: an acquaintance/friend of mine) and was on Google's official blog, and Matt regularly speaks for Google on these sorts of issues. Yet, Jenzabar claims that it's "hearsay." That seems like a pretty difficult position to take. Jenzabar really wants to keep insisting that Google uses metatags, even as Google is making clear it does not? And it wants to force the court to censor blog posts to keep living in that fantasy world? Good luck with that...
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Would there not be more concern if they were taking something typed on a blog as 'an official statement'. Having spent so much time trying to defend blogging and comments as conversation, why be concerned when the language is observed in exactly that fashion?
Sure there will be some wonderfully slimy bags who will find ways to exploit that viewpoint, but they will be easily recognized as part of a douche kit.
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Gotta love 'educational organizations' with a closed mind.
Education or Indoctrination? lol
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Sue them!!!!!!!!
Name Jenzabar sounds very much like the great nation of Zanzibar.
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Pendant
Grammar nazi's be damned, but where oh where is the closing right parenthesis on the first parenthetical statement?! It's like a multiple line IF statement without the closing bracket! Drives me nuts!
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Re: Pendant
Oops. Fixed. Sorry.
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It is hearsay
So, yeah. It is hearsay.
In a legal sense, hearsay is any out of court statement admitted to prove the truth of the matter. Here, a blog post is an out of court statement, and it would be admitted to prove the truth of the matter, that google doesn't use meta tags in its ranking.
That being said. It doesn't really matter. If google wants to get that in court they can just bring someone with first hand knowledge in to testify to that fact. It's just easier if someone doesn't have to give testimony.
Just in case someone calls me on this, the only way it would get in as an admission of a party opponent is if Jenzabar wants to bring the statement in. Google couldn't bring it in under that exception to the hearsay rule. They could try to argue that it was a business memorandum/record, but that's probably a bit of a stretch.
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Missed the point
The primary reason that the Jenzabar company is accusing Public Citizen lawyer Paul Levy of spreading 'hearsay' information on his blog is that they want to prevent him from helping the small non-profit film company. There doesn't seem to be any plausible trademark case. Paul Levy is an excellent lawyer and he is a pro bono lawyer. Jenzabar has filed a document asking the court to prevent Paul Levy from working on this case. (See http://www.citizen.org/documents/Motion%20to%20Disqualify%20Counsel.pdf) The non-profit film company (Long Bow Group) says Jenzabar's main goal is to drive them into bankruptcy.
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