A French blogger has been fined €1,500 (£1,180) after being sued for writing a negative blogpost about a restaurant.
Caroline Doudet was sued by the restaurant's owner because her blogpost featured highly on Google searches for the restaurant, Il Giardino in Cap-Ferret, south-west France. "I was really stunned and disgusted, and of course I will worry now [whenever I] write a negative review," Doudet said of the effect of the case on her in an email to Wired.co.uk. "I regret the article, because it's so much noise for nothing."
The blogpost in question was published in August 2013 and headlined: "The place to avoid in Cap-Ferret, Il Giardino".
According to French website Arrêt sur Images, the restaurant's owner admitted that the service Doudet received may not have been perfect, but that the article was "more of an insult than criticism" and was doing his business harm when it appeared in Google searches.
In typical internet style, Google searches for the restaurant now prominently feature articles about it suing Caroline Doudet.
Although the restaurant sued about the entire article, the judge's decision was limited to the headline, which Doudet was ordered to change. In addition to the €1,500 fine she had to pay
€1,000 (£790) in court costs, bringing her total bill for writing a blogpost to €2,500 (£2,000).
Instead of changing the title, Doudat deleted the article, because it was "easier".
Doudet's blog, Cultur'elle, has just over 2,000 followers on Twitter and just over 3,000 Wordpress followers.
The judge suggested that this exacerbated the harm her blogpost had caused to the restaurant. "Maybe there were some errors in the service, that happens sometimes in the middle of August -- I recognise that," the restaurant owner told Arrêt sur Images. "But this article showed in the Google search results and did my business more and more harm, even though we have worked seven days a week for 15 years. I could not accept that."
Doudet said the restaurant did not contact her about the post before beginning legal proceedings, which did not amount to a full trial but rather an emergency hearing, and that she did not have time to find a lawyer, so had to represent herself.
As it was an emergency hearing, the decision will not create a legal precedent, but comes amid criticism of the European Court of Justice recently ruling in favour of a "right to be forgotten" online.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
