[humorix] Deutsche Bahn Receives Special Delivery From Google

[James Baughn <jbaughn@ldd.net>]

Deutsche Bahn Receives Special Delivery From Google
April 18, 2002

In response to Deutsche Bahn's pending lawsuit against
Google for linking to a now non-existent page about how to
sabotage railroad signals, Google has delivered 13.6 metric
tons of computer printouts to DB's corporate headquarters.
The stack of dead trees includes the text of every single
website in Google's database that includes the word
"railroad" (and then some), any one of which could be the
grounds for yet another DB lawsuit.

"We're giving Deutsche Bahn the chance to peruse our links
database and mark off any website they find objectionable,"
Google's Vice President Of Covering Our Asses said. 
"Obviously, we don't have the time or manpower to go
through and remove any link that somebody, somehow,
somewhere might not like. So we're passing the buck to DB."

Google delivered the printouts by truck convoy from its
subsidiary German office earlier this morning.  It was
deemed wiser to make the shipment via Autobahn instead of
Deutsche Bahn, considering that any railroad system
operating under security-through-litigation is likely to be
highly sabotage-able.

"The lawyers at DB seem to think that we have the magical
ability to personally inspect and approve every single item
in our database," the Veep of C.O.A. explained.  "We're
turning the tables by showing them what's it like.  We
don't want to hear any excuses from DB about our special
delivery.  It's their problem now."

According to quick back-of-the-envelope wild-ass-guesses
calculated by the Humorix Vast Spy Network(tm), it will
take Deutsche Bahn approximately 195 man-years to go
through the printouts and inspect every website to make
sure it doesn't violate German law or contain other grounds
for filing a lawsuit.  

Google has offered to deliver similar printouts to other
lawsuit-happy companies, for a small fee.  "If you think
our database contains a website with a link to another
website with a link to another website with a link to a
news article that paints your company in a less than
favorable light, too bad. But if you think our database
contains a website that violates the law, please let us
know and we'll dispatch our fleet of trucks to make the
delivery.  Please prepare at least 5,000 square feet of
empty space before we arrive."

Deutsche Bahn lawyers, which were frantically trying to
find a warehouse to temporarily store the deluge of
printouts before the next rainstorm hits, were obviously
unavailable for comment at press time, and will probably be
unavailable for quite some time.

--
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