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A big hole has been punctured in Google’s usual defence against libel, with an Australian court throwing out the search giant’s argument that it’s just a listing tool. All because it didn’t remove a link to an incorrect web site.
The Australian case covers a chap called Milorad Trkulja, who asked a web site to remove content believed to be libellous regarding false allegations of local organised involvement, also requesting Google remove all links to it from its search results. It was at this point that the Australian court found Google guilty of libel, after the search giant refused to remove links to the offending article.
Google’s been fined the equivalent of $200,000 for the infringement, but is appealing the decision. The Australian judge seems to be a little sympathetic toward Google’s argument, explaining in the verdict that it was the jury’s decision to find it guilty, because…
The jury were entitled to conclude that Google Inc intended to publish the material that its automated systems produced, because that was what they were designed to do upon a search request being typed into one of Google Inc’s search products. In that sense, Google Inc is like the newsagent that sells a newspaper containing a defamatory article. While there might be no specific intention to publish defamatory material, there is a relevant intention by the newsagent to publish the newspaper for the purposes of the law of defamation.
So Google’s not the newspaper, just the automated newsagent. But is still guilty anyway because it developed the software to work that way. A pretty worrying new way of looking at Google’s indexing of the web. [Supreme Court of Victoria via Mashable]
This is stupid and will either be overturned or destroy the usefulness of search engines. If a search engine cannot risk linking to a page that may or may not contain libellous material, then evrey single page would have to be approved by a legal team before inclusion in the search database.
Would a solution be that everyone got a pop up next time they did a search along the lines that “Any websites returned by this search have been selected algorithmically based on your input,location and other factors deemed relevant. Google accepts no responsibility for the content of these sites which is entirely out of it’s control.”
Exactly right. Even the judge’s example is ridiculous, by his reasoning he’d be able to fine every newsagent and library that sold a copy of a newspaper containing libel, a judgement that would, if he tried which would immediately be thrown out at appeal.
I think it only applies if the newsagent/library continues to publish after its made aware of the libel, interesting ramifications for libraries that store old copies of newspapers though, do they have to go back and attach corrections to them all?
Good point, I missed the part where Google had been notified of the libel. Would be interesting to know the situation with libraries, as you say.
Is that not in someway part of the EULA for Google anyway?
Google should just troll Australia and make all searches return only the link to this court case.
Yep – I like this idea, but not just Google, but all search engines. After all, if Google is found guilty, its only a matter of time until they go after all of them that index this page.
In other news, Google has just delisted anything hosted in or containing the word “Australia”