Googlebomb the Polish president, go to jail for up to 3 years

A Polish paper has reported that a googlebomber ("23 years old Marek W. from Cieszyn") has been arrested for creating a googlebomb that turned President Lech Kaczyński's homepage into the top search result for Google searches on the word "kutas" ("penis"). Marek W faces up to three years in prison.

The man used the official website of Polish president Lech Kaczyński for testing the software. When internet users typed "kutas" ["penis"] they got the official president's site. Furthermore - it was the first result. They played with this for couple of months - right up to March this year. That's when the 23 years old was traced by investigator from the Katowice police office.

Finding him wasn't difficult - the man used his home computer, which police easily traced by its IP address. The computer amateur confirmed that he wrote the program. "I just wanted to verify my skills and check if the software works" was his his explanation during the hearings.

Link (via Ars Technica)

• [Anonymous]

  It’s not illegal to critisize the president, it’s illegal to call him names. Are you allowed to offend a policeman? Why should you be allowed to offend the president?
  The president, and his twin brother (surprise! he’s a prime minister) are quite often referred to as “kaczka” (“duck”), and if you google the word, you can see them between the real animals.
  There is lots of critics in Poland, and plenty of sites making fun of them: http://www.cda.pl/gry-online/3/kaczki.php (can you see the difference between the brothers?) just for an example.
  To all of you that think Poland is scary, I say – come visit us. Your car is already here ;)

  just a Pole

• [musmon]

  LoL :)

• [Anonymous]

  Fredshome – i’m from poland and belive me or not most of inteligent people feel shame because of what our government is doing inside and outside the country. At the moment i live in UK – earning £200 per month for being a general manager in a private company in poland wasn’t interesting for me and i was working there for 2 years. If you look closer to our situation you’ll understand – i feel even symphaty for that poor guy, plaing with words is not safe any more.
  And DCULBERSON – you are right, people were voting for them, and maybe they’ll vote again… it’s a shame that we don’t have a real choice, it’s just choosing between those who’ll make more and those who’ll make less damage to our country.

  Regards to all

• [ferrisferris]

  “Kutas” is not “penis”. It’s more like “prick”.

  Fredshome – you fail to distinguish between the goverment and the people. The image projected by the government is pure politics which helps the ruling party win elections by securing 25 per cent of the votes. The question is: does this mean that the rest of Poles are xenophobic, christian crusaders bent on bringing Europe back to christianity and sending Jews back to Israel? The obvious answer is no and if you disagree, this would suggest that you’re slightly biased against Poland. And besides – if you happen to live in London, look around – what do you see? Or who do you prefer – Poles or the Turkish guys? I choose both :)

• [zolf]

  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kutas 2 has meaninings:
  – a village in Hungary
  – a decorative element of clothing in XVII-XVIII century

  About the clothing definition:
  – it was a kind of a decorative rope ended with pom-pon that was connected to the belt and was falling down (so it has some connection with contemporary meaning)
  – this name is used in XIX century epic poem “Pan Tadeusz”
  – this epic poem is mandatory for reading in lyceum (high school) – more than 100 pages of poem :)

• [Anonymous]

  @Fredshome, average people here googlebomb the President’s site. :P

• [Anonymous]

  I think this is a bad sign.

  Arresting someone because he “insults” someone on the internet? It’s like arresting someone because he speaks to some people stating that any politican is an idiot, for example. Is Poland a democracy with true rights FOR the people?

  And by the way, politicans are often corrupt too, so why should I face potential problems when I insult someone who is corrupt?

  That sounds totally weird!

• [phasor3000]

  Apparently the actual “offense” was causing insult to the President (or other heads of state), which is against the law in Poland. Incredible but true.

• [Fredshome]

  It’s interesting to see that Europeans are wondering what to do with Turkey’s application to the union, yet we let Poland in. Something that an increasing number of people luckily seem to be fairly uncomfortable with.

  As seen from the rest of Europe, Poland is even more alien than the US, with a twist of “we hate foreigners, and anything non christian, and jews and whoever isn’t caucasian” added for taste. I’m not familiar enough with Poland to comment on the average people there, but the image projected by their government makes them appear to be on par with Pakistan or Saudi Arabia as far as openness goes.

  Poland as it is now is quite scary seen up close.

• [mikelotus]

  Not working now, but wikipedia tells me that “Kutas is a village in Somogy county, Hungary.” One man’s kutas is another man’s home.

  I can not believe that he could not appeal this to EU Human Rights commission.

• [Anonymous]

  But “kutas” not only means prick, but also tassel. That makes whole issue even more weird. Well, I’m Polish and I’m proud of it. Kind of proud lately. We have one problem here: there is ultra-catholic, radio station Radio Maryja here, owned and maanged by really smart monk: Tadeusz Rydzyk. he uses this radio for “programming” thousands of poor polish people that couldn’t stand the changes, that came after communism has failed. They’re poor, because they can’t do anything until the’re told what to do. They’re doing what Radio Maryja tells them to do, they’re believieng what Rydzyk tells them to believe. Adn he tells them, that all the evil comes from jews, EU, gays and liberals. And of course, they vote as they’re told to. That’s why Kaczynski brothers are now ruling Poland. And Rydzyk is untouchable, looks like the Catholic Church is unable to do anything to fix the situation. But we have new elections soon, we will see…

  Anyway, I’m sorry for polish government and all that assholes that make people believe that we do hate jews, foreigners, gays etc. Most of us do not. Some of us do – just like everywhere.

• [Anonymous]

  Such naive and ignorant comments are usually the effect of overt reliance on the mass media as a source for truth. Even a quick visit to the country would reveal that not everyone is Christian, anti-semitism exists only in legends and history books, and foreigners are greeted with the utmost hospitality. That the government happens to lend itself well to such “believe-it-or-not” news-bites is unfortunate, but to compare the country to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia is as insulting to Poles as it is to those repressed by the political systems in the aforementioned Asian countries. Poland doesn’t seem scary up close or from afar. Unless, of course, your entire knowledge of a nation stems from few sensationalist articles. But of course, that isn’t the case, is it Fredshome?

  arthur

  ps: Check back in a few weeks and find out whether the guy was acquitted. What do you think will happen?

• [Anonymous]

  Thanks god I’m in Brazil. Here we can create a simple and easy googlebomb without going under arrest. And, HEI, we (bloggers) did this just yesterday!

  Search in Google for “vergonha nacional” (wich means “national shame” in portuguese) and click the I’m Feeling Lucky button. The page you will get,(if it’s back online, will be the Brazilian Senate’s site.

  But you know, bloggers and politicians are really a good example of mice and cats fight. We’re the cats. Really. :)

• [dculberson]

  Ferris, if a government wins votes by projecting a certain image, doesn’t that imply that the people endorse, and believe in, said image? I would think that a vote is a statement of “yes, I agree.” As such, if Polish people say “I agree” to a xenophobic, antisemitic position, well, what does that say about them?

  Self disclosure: I’m American, and ashamed by what my fellow citizens seem to endorse, so I’m sympathetic to (some of) the Polish people’s plight there.

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden/Moderator]

  Anonymous #6: “It’s not illegal to critisize the president, it’s illegal to call him names. Are you allowed to offend a policeman? Why should you be allowed to offend the president?”

  In theory, we’re allowed to offend both presidents and policemen, though that happy liberty has of late been eroded. We can, within limits, offend our fellow citizens. It would be wrong to implicitly define policemen or presidents as a separate class of privileged beings.

  Besides, politicians are a deeply practical bunch. If you let them get away with curtailing what you can say on the grounds that it’s name-calling or offensive, the next thing you know they’ll be claiming to be offended by something purely as a political maneuver.

• [Alex Luna]

  Yesterday, Bender Blog, from Brazil, started a google bomb in which the words Vergonha Nacional (“National Shame” in Portuguese) links to the page of the Senate, after our not very honest representants voted against punishing the president of the senate in a secret session.

  It worked. :D