Woman sues YAHOO! because search of her name results in links to porn
 

http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives...overture_s.htm

By Eric Goldman

Stayart v. Yahoo!, 2:2009cv00116 (E.D. Wis. complaint filed Feb. 5, 2009). The Justia page.

Bev Stayart appears to be proud of her accomplishments. As the complaint recounts her credentials, we are informed that she has an MBA in finance, was a VP at an unnamed financial institution, is passionate about animals, participates in an online discussion forum where her "scholarly" posts have generated 17,000 hits in three years, and has written two poems about protecting seals that were published on Danish websites. I'm not quite sure exactly what we are supposed to glean from these facts, but if they are designed to establish that she has had a life-well-lived, then we might extend her some kudos for that. These facts--IMO, much less compellingly--also apparently support her allegation (para. 21) that her name has commercial value because of "her humanitarian endeavors, positive and wholesome image, and the popularity of her scholarly posts on the Internet." If 17,000 hits in three years creates commercial value in the author's name, then the Internet is filled with rock stars!

Perhaps more remarkable is that Bev Stayart claims she is the only "Bev Stayart" and "Beverly Stayart" on the Internet (para. 19), and it appears that she would like to keep it that way. Thus, she is seemingly taking the position that any reference to "Bev Stayart" and "Beverly Stayart" on the Internet must be referring to her and only her. That would be a neat trick if true because it could give her exclusionary power over every Internet reference containing those names, but I would be shocked if there is and has been only one Bev/Beverly Stayart in the entire world.

It's a little unclear from the complaint exactly what's going on to make Bev Stayart unhappy, but it looks like she ran into some cloaked search engine spam pages that referenced her name. For example, she searched for "Beverly Stayart" in Yahoo and got the following search result out of a total of 7 unique search results

(see link for rest of the story)

People still use AltaVista?

Wondering the same thing.

Idiot.

I don't think I've ever seen someone list just their MBA and not undergrad schooling: http://bevstayart.emurse.com/resume/ Also love the 11-year gap from school to first job (as "CFO", uh huh). She clearly has no case, but you have to give her credit for getting lots of free exposure for her husband's law firm.

During my last semester of grad school I took a course called "Liberty and Security in the Age of Information and the War on Terror." Gotta love those hybrid Pitt Law/GSPIA courses - they always have the longest names!

I would love to hear what my professor has to say about this topic, though.

If she had just kept her mouth shut, no one would know about it. If business associates or friends who know her last name did a search for her, I doubt they'd use Yahoo or AltaVista. She didn't want her name to be associated with an adult video.

Now that she's gone and filed this lawsuit, her name will be known everywhere!

I wonder how many hits turn up with her name now!

Is having your name associated with "batshit crazy lady" better than porn?

I can't get past standing.