Prostitute Alix Tichelman Sipped WIne As She Watched Google Exec Die of Heroin Overdose

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) — A high-end prostitute has been arrested on suspicion of murder after injecting heroin into a Google executive on his yacht in Santa Cruz and leaving him to die when he overdosed, according to police.

Surveillance footage from the yacht shows the suspect, Alix Tichelman, 26, gather her belongings, including the heroin and needles, step over the 51-year-old victim's body to finish a glass of wine and then lower a blind before leaving the boat, Santa Cruz police said Tuesday.

Authorities said Tichelman, of Folsom, did not provide first aid or call 911 as the man suffered medical complications and went unconscious during the November overdose. His body was discovered the next morning by the boat's captain, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported.

"She showed no regard for him. She was just trying to cover her tracks," Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark told the Sentinel.

Tichelman was arrested on July 4 after police said a detective lured her back to the Santa Cruz area by posing as a potential client and reaching agreement on a price of more than $1,000.

She was booked into Santa Cruz County Jail on suspicion of second-degree murder, destruction of evidence and transporting and providing narcotics. It was not immediately clear whether she had an attorney.

The Sentinel identified the victim as Forrest Timothy Hayes, a Google executive and father of five, and said the overdose occurred on his 50-foot yacht, Escape, at the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor.

Tichelman, who boasted she had more than 200 clients, met her clients through a website, police said.

Maria Belen Rodriguez Says she is not a prostitute and sues Google and Yahoo

If you Google Argentine model and TV personality Maria Belen Rodriguez, you’ll be directed to a handful of images that are linked to escort services and pornographic websites, despite the fact that Rodriguez herself is neither an escort nor a porn actor. Now, Rodriguez is suing Google and Yahoo for linking her images to the adult sites—and her case is going all the way to the Argentine Supreme Court. “They [Yahoo and Google] have ruined my life,” Rodriguez told reporters last week. “Having to explain every day that I am not a prostitute is a daily complication.”

Rodriguez has been waging war against the search engines began in 2006, when she first discovered that older images of her were being linked to adult-oriented websites. In 2010, a judge awarded her $15,000 for both lawsuits, which was eventually reduced to $6,200 by a higher Argentine court.

Eight years later, Rodriguez is suing Google for the right to have the links taken down, claiming that her name’s association with porn websites has done irreversible harm to her reputation. “She has a family and young children,” her attorney told reporters. “We are also seeking compensatory damages, which is obvious because whoever harms somebody has to repair the damage.”

Google, for its part, says that the creators of the pornographic websites linking to Rodriguez’s images (who are not named in the suit) should be responsible for taking the links down, not the search engine itself: “Search engines are neutral platforms that do not create or control content on the web,” the company said in a statement to CNN. Argentine civil rights groups agree, arguing that Rodriguez’s attempts to scrub her Google search results are tantamount to censorship.

This is not the first time someone has turned to the courts to get embarrassing or defamatory search results taken down. In 2009, Bev Stayart unsuccessfully sued Yahoo after discovering the search engine linked her name to erectile dysfunction medication, and in 2012, an Australian court ruled that Google had to pay $200,000 to a man whose “defamatory” search results inadvertently linked him to a major crime syndicate, resulting in him beingshot in the back.

Although search engines and Internet freedom advocates have said that individuals should not be able to manipulate their own search results, arguing that such a right, if exercised, would be akin to press censorship, this argument was dealt a blow earlier this month, following a European top court ruling that individuals had the “right to be forgotten.” The ruling required Google to grant all individual requests to take down links containing “inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant” information.

While the recent EU ruling should have been welcome news to Rodriguez, she doesn’t seem too optimistic about the outcome of her lawsuit. “I am an ant fighting against a giant monster,” she told reporters of her battle against the search engines.

I can't imagine why Google and Yahoo could possibly mix her images with porn related sites lol

Obama Backs Away From Net Neutrality Campaign Promises After FCC Vote

As a candidate, Barack Obama left little doubt about his promise to keep the Internet a level playing field. Now his position is far from clear.

Barack Obama was crystal clear during the 2008 campaign about his commitment to ensuring equal treatment of all online content over American broadband lines. “I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality,” Obama told a crowd at Google in 2008. “Because once providers start to privilege some applications or websites over others then the smaller voices get squeezed out and we all lose.”

At a 2007 campaign forum, he went so far as to specifically promise that his Federal Communications Commission appointments would defend the principle of a “level playing field for whoever has the best idea.” “As president, I am going to make sure that that is the principle that my FCC commissioners are applying as we move forward,” he said.

But on Thursday, the President made no public statement when three Democrats he appointed to the FCC voted to move forward with a plan to allow broadband carriers to provide an exclusive “fast lane” to commercial companies that pay extra fees to get their content transmitted online. Instead, White House aides released a press release distancing the President from the decision.