Sue Scheff: Traverse Legal Radio Talks about Google Bomb Book

I was thrilled to be a guest on Traverse Legal Radio this week!


We talked about Internet Defamation and how it can devastate your business and reputation.

Learn more – click here to read the transcript and listen!

Reminder: Purchase Google Bomb book to learn more about how you can maintain your virtual image! Learn from my mistakes!

"Google Bomb"! Where was this book last month when I could have used it?

"Google Bomb"! Where was this book last month when I could have used it?

By: Gryphen

Sue Scheff didn't expect she'd make enemies when she founded the child and parenting advocacy organization PURE. But someone began attacking her on the Internet, posting enough defamatory statements to compel her to bring a lawsuit. She won $11.3 million in 2006.In light of what happened to me last month, and what continues to happen to other people attempting to bring out the truth concerning Palin and other GOP leaders, I thought that this might be an important book for people to purchase in order to protect themselves from future attack.

It was written by Sue Scheff and John W. Dozier, who is an expert in "Internet Law", and specializes in representing businesses and individuals who have suffered defamatory attacks via the internet.I am going to purchase this book for my own edification and recommend to my friends, who own blogs and websites, to go out and get themselves a copy as well.There is no telling who the evil minions will go after next and we may as well be ready for them.

Sue Scheff: Sneak Peak of Google Bomb - The Foreword

Last week was fantastic as Google Bomb book launched into book stores and Amazon numbers were remarkable! The LA Times did a 4 part series leading up to the official release date of September 1st. Here is part one, which is where Google Bomb begins! An engaging and dynamic foreword by Michael Fertik. For those that know me, I have always stated that my attorney, David Pollack vindicated me in a court of law, and it was Reputation Defender that brought my virtual image back to where it was prior the malicious and defamatory attack on my organization, my name and my family.

Part 1

Sue Scheff didn’t expect she’d make enemies when she founded the child and parenting advocacy organization PURE. But someone began attacking her on the Internet, posting enough defamatory statements to compel her to bring a lawsuit. She won $11.3 million in 2006.
In this exclusive preview of the book “Google Bomb,” Brand X brings you the story of what the lawsuit means, Sue’s own perspective and 10 tips to protect yourself online. The series begins today and will continue through Tuesday, when the book goes on sale [on sale now].

We begin with the foreword by Michael Fertik, CEO and founder of Reputation Defender:

Google is not God. Google is not the First Amendment, and it is not the truth. It is a machine. It may be the best machine invented in the past fifteen years, with myriad benefits for human knowledge and collaboration, but it is still just a machine that operates on rules devised by people. For that reason, it is both inherently fallible and subject to deliberate abuse.

It may be amazing that we actually have to say that Google isn’t God or the equivalent of freedom of speech or informational gospel truth. But it is clear that many of us believe that what shows up on the top of Google results is the most important, best, most accurate, most complete, most reliable, and most up-to-date information about the subject we are searching. From what is publicly understood about Google, it seems that the search engine scientists who work there try very hard to make the most democratically valued information rise to the top, on the basic operating theory that the wisdom of the crowd will, over time, tend to favor the best and most comprehensive websites that discuss a particular topic, be it animal, vegetable, or mineral, cabbages or kings.

But despite what may be Google’s best efforts and intentions, the machine gets it wrong at least as often as it gets it right. The errors and omissions of the world’s search engines visit punishing consequences on the victims of erroneous, obsolete, incomplete, or false information. Nonetheless, despite this mixed (and possibly worsening) track record, the rising primacy of Google as the world’s most important data channel seems to hoodwink many of us into believing what we see when it comes up on the top of Google search results. The theory goes: if it shows up on Google, it must be true and it’s somehow the best information about the subject being searched.


It is clear that people make decisions based on what they find in the top positions on Google: multiple visual “heat maps” published on the Internet have shown that the vast majority of Google users look at the top few results and ignore everything below them.

This is important for all of us, as we have become as searchable as the subjects we crave information on. What shows up at the top of Google can make or break our professional lives, our chances at romance, and our ability to get into the school of our dreams. It is far easier to harm someone and destroy their reputation on the World Wide Web than it is to make that person look great or even plain vanilla neutral. Blogs and discussion forums often enjoy more prominence in search engines than newspapers and other edited professional journals. Under the rules of search engines as they exist today, odd blog and forum corners of the Web can be turned into powerful launch pads of interpersonal attack.

There are real-life consequences when someone aims to destroy someone else on the Internet. It’s all too easy to destroy another person on the Web. In cyber-slamming cases, victims are often intimidated into silence because they feel powerless and helpless, and their first instinct is to shut themselves up so that things don’t “get worse.” Sue, a victim herself, is a rare individual because she decided to stand up for herself on the Web, defend herself in the courts and online, and go about protecting herself and others in an assertive way. You may or may not agree with everything Sue and John have written, but we can all agree that the narrative they tell is an important one for the emerging discussion of Internet, speech, and the speech-shaping powers of Google.

Part 2 Do you know what Google is Saying about you?
Part 3 Ready to protect yourself online? OK, let’s get started
Part 4 The top 10 ways to protect yourself from e-venge

Order today!

Google Bomb book hits LA Times!

The LA Times started last Thursday with a 4 part series on the launching of Google Bomb Book. Today is the official release date! Part one was the dynamic foreward by Michael Fertik, CEO and founder of Reputation Defender. Part two is my turn, and here it is!

Sue Scheff didn’t expect she’d make enemies when she founded the child and parenting advocacy organization PURE. But someone began attacking her on the Internet, posting enough defamatory statements to compel her to bring a lawsuit. She won $11.3 million in 2006.In this second installment of our exclusive preview of the book “Google Bomb,” (read part 1 here) Brand X brings you Scheff’s story.

Even years later, “Sue Scheff is destroying lives…I want others to know…” still has the impact of a sucker punch I didn’t see coming from the Internet. It was August, 2003 when the first attack on my integrity appeared on a website that focused on programs for at-risk teens, the industry in which I provide services to parents via an organization I founded called PURE. The individual posting was a parent I had actually tried to help after she contacted me for assistance. So, imagine my shock when that first unexpected accusation escalated into a full-blown character assassination.

Threats were made against me and a gang mentality took hold as numerous voices began to chime in. Who were these people? Other than the initiator of the attacks and the website owner, I had no idea. Why did they seem so driven to destroy me and my organization? Again, I was clueless. And I had absolutely no idea how to make this runaway train stop. I didn’t dare make my presence known on the forum for fear of the virtual lynch mob that went after a few well-meaning supporters who tried to intervene on my behalf only to end up like road kill on the Information Highway themselves.

As I continued to watch this whole crazy thing spin beyond damage control, something just as frightening would eventually snake its way into the search engines of Google: If you typed in Sue Scheff it wasn’t my website with educational articles and resources for parents that appeared at first glance. No, because over two pages of initial Google results led to links that took viewers to sites like Sue Scheff’s Red Panties where I was the star of a pornographic discussion. Not exactly what you want your kids or parents to see. As for professional colleagues, they were targets of proximity that risked losing their own credibility unless they kept their distance.

With no other way to defend myself and restore my damaged reputation, in December, 2003, I hired an attorney, David Pollack, who filed a lawsuit in Broward County, Florida against the originator of the attacks. In the next three years I racked up over $150,000 in legal fees and saw my organization nearly disintegrate. I developed classic symptoms of agoraphobia that transformed me from an extrovert who loved working with families, to a depressed recluse who wouldn’t answer the phone and rarely left the home I had mortgaged to the hilt in order to continue litigation.

Victims of Internet defamation and cyberstalking reside in a lonely place in our society. It’s like living in a Leper Colony: Population of One. Make no mistake. This monster is an equal opportunity offender that does not discriminate on the basis of your profession, gender, color, religion, or anything else that we think might set us apart from every other person in life. From lawyers to landscapers, teens to grandparents: No one is immune.

The malicious stroke of a key has become the equivalent of a cyberbullet. Only it’s not just getting fired off into cyberspace, it’s hitting intended targets in very real, physical places. The underbelly of Internet society that aggressively pursues unsuspecting victims, and the lack of legal protection against the invisible trolls who bully and stalk at will, has received a recent spike in public awareness. Good.

We need very real repercussions for violating a reporter’s privacy in a motel room with a peep camera for mass voyeuristic consumption. We need to insist upon a civilized Internet community where good, decent people can no longer be held hostage by a vindictive ex-spouse, a mentally unbalanced customer, or some acquaintance in class that goes by the name of “anonymous.”
After nearly losing my house to pay for my day in court, and nearly losing my sanity as well as my business during the three years it took me to get there, on September 19, 2006, a jury declared their outrage with a landmark $11.3M verdict, a forceful warning that ruining lives with online attacks is wrong and will not be tolerated.

And yet I continue to be stunned by the volume of emails I receive with heartbreaking stories that are as bad, or worse, than my own. The wheels of justice plod slowly in a www.world that moves at the speed of thought, the click of a mouse. So as we continue to wait for the courts to catch up with our virtual reality, do you know what Google is saying about you?

– Sue Scheff and Olivia Rupprecht

Sue Scheff: Google Bomb Book featured in Washington Post by Kathleen Parker

I was so flattered and honored to speak with Columnist and Journalist, Kathleen Parker. She interviewed me yesterday and wrote an amazing column which included my new book book, Google Bomb, that is now available on Amazon and will be officially released on September 1st. The endorsements and reviews have been fantastic! There is a ground swell, and I believe we have the making of a best seller. The topic is timely and sizzling with the recent news on Google being forced to expose an anonymous Blogger.

Follow Google Bomb Book on Twitter @GoogleBombBook and @SueScheff

Shock Waves From the Google Bombs

By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, August 26, 2009

When Oscar Wilde observed that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, he could not have imagined the Internet.
The wild frontier we now know and (mostly) love called the blogosphere is a not-always-okay corral where Free Speech is armed and often dangerous.

The latest showdown is between two women — a Vogue model and an anonymous blogger — at odds over what is permissible in the name of free expression. After the blogger called Liskula Cohen a “skank,” among other things, the model demanded her identity from the blog host, Google. A New York Supreme Court judge agreed that she was entitled to the information and ordered the company to reveal her name.

Outraged, the blogger, revealed as Rosemary Port, is launching a $15 million lawsuit against Google for disclosing her identity. Google’s Andrew Pederson said that while his company sympathizes with victims of cyber-bullying, “We also take great care to respect privacy concerns and will only provide information about a user in response to a subpoena or other court order.”

Voila.

This all may seem like an inside-the-runway spat between two women who don’t like each other. As pioneering blogger and law professor Glenn Reynolds noted on Instapundit, “I never would have heard the words ‘Liskula Cohen’ and ’skank’ together if it hadn’t been for her blogger-outing litigation efforts.”

The model case isn’t insignificant, however, and raises weighty questions about privacy, anonymity and the future of e-free speech.

The problem of online defamation is hardly new, but several recent lawsuits have begun challenging the anything-goes modus operandi of the Internet. One of the most famous dates to 2006, when Sue Scheff won a staggering $11.3 million verdict against a woman who had posted hundreds of defamatory comments about Scheff and her company, which counsels the parents of troubled teens.

After years of torment that included stalkers and death wishes, Scheff was able to prove that her reputation and business suffered as a result of the defendant’s comments. In her new book, “Google Bomb,” due for release Sept. 1 and co-authored with attorney John W. Dozier Jr., Scheff tells the story of her lawsuit and offers advice to others similarly defamed online.

“Google bomb” is Internet slang for attempting to raise the ranking of a given page during a Google search. The popularity of a page may not reflect the page’s relationship to truth, but it may be popular for other reasons. Let’s just say, nasty sells.

Defusing Google bombs isn’t much fun unless you’re a computer geek or have no preferable ways of spending your time. To keep your online profile positive and prominent, you have to blog, tweet and maintain Web sites — or hire someone to do it for you. Scheff says she resents having to do these things, but, “if you don’t own your own name, someone else will.”
Scheff considers herself lucky because she was able to hire an attorney as well as an Internet monitoring company, ReputationDefender, that manages her online persona. Others, hundreds of whom write her each week, aren’t so fortunate. In one example, a wedding photographer lost his business when a single unhappy bride went ‘zilla and trashed him online.

“No one is immune,” says Scheff. And, just because you’re not personally active on the Internet doesn’t mean that your persona isn’t online — not necessarily in a good way. The Internet has unleashed that part of ourselves that we used to keep under wraps. Dark thoughts, like the trolls of Mordor, can now surface and thrive by the light of day.

The freedom granted by anonymity and a virtual audience may have been a boon to democracy, affording everyone a voice, but it has been a plague on decency. Inhibition, we lament, is an undervalued virtue.

Scheff’s case and the Cohen incident suggest that a new level of accountability, largely missing from personal blogs, may be in the offing. “What you type today can haunt you tomorrow,” says Scheff. “People need to know that if you use your mouse and keypad to harm others, there is a price tag.”

Harm is the operative word. Although Scheff was able to prove material losses, Cohen likely gained from her brief tenure as a victim. In fact, she has dropped her lawsuit and forgiven the blogger.

No one likes being bashed online or elsewhere — and public people are familiar with the experience. But even Scheff thinks that in the absence of quantifiable defamation, anonymity deserves protection. As Google and the courts slug it out, Cohen did manage to render an oft-ignored lesson in bold italics: Think before you type.

Or else someone may want more than a penny for your thoughts.