The Israeli town of Kiryat Yam is suing Google for slander because the service says the town was built on the ruins of an Arab village. AP fills in the details:
Kiryat Yam was pulled into the dispute — still one of the hottest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — when a Google Earth user, Thameen Darby, inserted a note on the map saying it was built on the location of Ghawarina. Darby has inserted at least 10 such notes over Google’s map of Israel.
Kiryat Yam filed a slander complaint with Israel’s police, said town official Naty Keyzilberman. “This obviously cannot be true, because Kiryat Yam was founded in 1945,” he said, explaining the police complaint. . . .
Asked to respond to the police complaint, a Google spokesman said Google Earth depends on user-generated content that reflects what people contribute, not what Google believes is accurate.
Would the internet giant respond the same way if user-generated content asserted that Google Inc.’s headquarters in Mountain View, Cal., were built over, say, a Muslim cemetery?
