$200,000 Judgement Against Google In Mokbel Shots Case 140
niftydude writes with news of damages awarded in a case over Google image search results "Should Google be held liable for images that appear in its search results? An Australian court has said yes.
'A Melbourne man who won a defamation case against search engine giant Google has been awarded $200,000 in damages. Milorad Trkulja, also known as Michael, sued the multinational over images of him alongside a well-known underworld figure that appeared in its search results. A six-person Supreme Court jury found last month that Mr Trkulja had been defamed by the images, which he first contacted Google about removing in 2009.'"
Due to legal requirements (Score:5, Interesting)
We at Google have had to ban all of Australia from google images. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Thank you,
Google.
Re:Did this cause $200,000 worth of damages? (Score:2, Interesting)
TFS doesn't really paint a good picture:
from TFA:
"Google search results also linked to a page on a now defunct website, Melbourne Crime, which had published photos labelled with his name.
Mr Trkulja said he had never initially intended to sue Google but had been galvanised into action after his request for the content to be removed from its searches in 2009 was not granted.
Supreme Court Justice David Beach this morning said in awarding the damages that the case was about ‘‘vindication and ‘nailing the lie’’’. "
and also:
"The company used the ‘‘innocent dissemination’’ defence, arguing it was providing links to the content without knowing that the material was defamatory.
However, the jury found Google’s defence of the images broke down because it did not take any steps to remove the images from its searches once Mr Trkulja’s lawyers contacted the company. The jury found the search engine was not liable for the search results themselves, as Mr Trkulja had incorrectly filled out a form for reporting offensive material by not including the URL of the content to which he objected. "