Advertising

The Seattle Times Company

NWjobs | NWautos | NWhomes | NWsource | Free Classifieds | seattletimes.com

The Seattle Times

Business / Technology


Our network sites seattletimes.com | Advanced

Brier Dudley's Blog

Brier Dudley offers a critical look at technology and business issues affecting the Northwest.

E-mail Brier| 206.515.5687 | Follow Brier on Twitter| Microsoft Pri0 blog| RSS feeds Subscribe | Blog Home

August 15, 2008 10:19 AM

Seattle lawyer's fight with SPU over Google tracks self-defeating

Posted by Brier Dudley

We're running an interesting story today about a Seattle lawyer fighting Seattle Pacific University over an old story in its student newspaper.

Shakespear Feyissa wants the story purged from the Falcon's online archives, but the paper's editors refuse. School administrators are willing to delete the archive, which is surprising for an institution guided by ancient scriptures.

But maybe Feyissa's beef shouldn't be with SPU and the Falcon, but with FindLaw instead. When you Google the guy's distinctive name, the first result is FindLaw's listing of the lawsuit he filed against the school in 2004 over his dismissal in 1998.

The actual Falcon story doesn't appear for two or three pages - basically nowhere land in Google, where only a tiny percentage of Web users will go.

If Feyissa believes he was wronged by the school for throwing him out, he should have pursued it. But by filing several lawsuits, he created public records and news coverage that won't ever go away.

The FindLaw listing is for a breach of contract suit he filed. Feyissa also complained to the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights that racial discrimination was a factor in his dismissal. The school being cleared of that allegation led to the Falcon story he's trying to get purged.

Now, by raising a stink about the online newspaper archive, he's only making it worse.

On the all-important first page of Google results, a search for his name also returns things such as his LinkedIn profile, his support for Obama and his activities in the East African immigrant community.

Rising today in the search results are links to our piece, retelling the story of why he was thrown out of the school - a 1998 arrest after a student complained of attempted sexual assault, which never led to charges but put him in jail for five days.

With information at our fingertips - through Google or any other search engine - Feyissa may want to reconsider that old saying, that there's no such thing as bad press.

The silver lining is that his outrage motivated him to pursue a career helping others, as a civil rights lawyer. Better that than P.R.

Digg Digg | Newsvine Newsvine

Submit a comment

*Required Field



Type the characters you see in the picture above.

Posted by The Tim

5:45 PM, Aug 15, 2008

Also, it would appear that Feyissa has never heard of the 'Streisand Effect.'

Posted by Teach

9:22 AM, Aug 16, 2008

I'm guessing that suppression of the story isn't Feyissa's goal here . . .

Posted by GayleE

8:26 PM, Aug 16, 2008

Surly, it is obvious to all, that Feyissa has memorized the entire first chapter of the book titled 'Self Promotion 101' .

Posted by tylur_durdin

8:42 AM, Aug 18, 2008

Ridiculous article. I'll play Captain Obvious here. If he wins, then that Findlaw (and all other legal references for that matter) will show that 'This guy was wrongly accused, he stood up for his rights, and he won.' Granted, he's putting more of his eggs in one basket / the lawsuit by building up the pressure with the media. However, if he's got evidence / a strategy to show it's highly probably that he can win, why not. If he does, media and press like this won't look clever, witty spin as originally intended but caddy, superficial, and unwarranted.

Posted by Danube Logus

11:58 AM, Aug 18, 2008

To be or not to be - I guess it wasn't to be for Shakespear.

Posted by Topic5

8:24 PM, Aug 18, 2008

In the future we'll all be rated & reviewed online; see: http://www.topic5.com/name/Shakespear/Feyissa/105

Recent entries

Aug 15, 08 - 10:19 AM
Seattle lawyer's fight with SPU over Google tracks self-defeating

Aug 14, 08 - 03:11 PM
Microsoft execs blogging about Windows 7

Aug 14, 08 - 02:39 PM
Where's Bill Gates putting his money? The latest public breakdown ...

Aug 14, 08 - 12:29 PM
GOP VP maybe dons crazy Seattle kippah

Aug 13, 08 - 09:00 PM
Zillow steps up local realty ads; Craigslist 2.0 for newspapers?

Advertising

Marketplace

Advertising

Advertising

Categories
Calendar

August

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
          1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31            
Browse the archives

August 2008

July 2008

June 2008

May 2008

April 2008

March 2008

Features

Video

Demo of the Week: TeachStreet.com

Share your thoughts!

Gadgets and games | Fun stuff I've written about lately includes Apple's iPhone, Hewlett-Packard's HDX laptop and Microsoft's Halo3. Also on the radar are new digital video boxes such as the Tivo HD and the Vudu.