Linking To News Doesn't Make Google Liable For Defamation, Australia Court Rules (arstechnica.com) 12
Google cannot be held liable for defamation simply for providing hyperlinks to other webpages, Australia's highest court ruled today. Ars Technica reports: By itself, providing a URL is not "participation in the communication of defamatory matter which happens to be at that address... In reality, a hyperlink is merely a tool which enables a person to navigate to another webpage," the High Court of Australia ruling said. The case relates to a Google search result that linked to a 2004 article published by The Age with the title, "Underworld loses valued friend at court." The article described Melbourne-based lawyer George Defteros, who was charged with conspiracy to murder and incitement to murder the day before it was published. The charge was withdrawn in 2005. Defteros sued Google after becoming aware that a Google search of his name produced a link to the article and a snippet. Google refused to remove the article from search results despite a request from Defteros in 2016.
A lower-court judge "found that the Underworld article conveyed a defamatory imputation, namely that the respondent had crossed the line from being a professional solicitor to being a confidant and friend of criminal elements," today's ruling noted. Lower courts decided that Google "published the defamatory matter because the provision of the Search Result was instrumental to the communication of the content of the Underworld article to the user, in that it lent assistance to its publication," according to a summary of today's ruling (PDF) provided by the High Court of Australia. Google had been ordered to pay Defteros $40,000 (about $27,710 in USD). But in reversing lower-court rulings, a 5-2 majority of the High Court found that Google did not publish the defamatory matter.
Google "did not lend assistance to The Age in communicating the defamatory matter contained in the Underworld article" because the "provision of a hyperlink in the Search Result merely facilitated access to the Underworld article and was not an act of participation in the bilateral process of communicating the contents of that article to a third party," the summary of the ruling said. "There was no other basis for finding publication because the appellant had not participated in the writing or disseminating of the defamatory matter." [...] Today's ruling could have been different if Google had been paid to promote The Age article. The appeal "does not present the occasion to consider whether the conclusion would be different in respect of those hyperlinks that, by agreement with a third party, are promoted by the appellant following a search request," the ruling said. "Nor was any issue raised on this appeal about any service provided in the aggregation of news results. It suffices to say that it is arguable that the appellant and a third party might share a common intention to publish the content of a third-party webpage that, as a consequence of an agreement between the appellant and the third party, is promoted as a search result."
A lower-court judge "found that the Underworld article conveyed a defamatory imputation, namely that the respondent had crossed the line from being a professional solicitor to being a confidant and friend of criminal elements," today's ruling noted. Lower courts decided that Google "published the defamatory matter because the provision of the Search Result was instrumental to the communication of the content of the Underworld article to the user, in that it lent assistance to its publication," according to a summary of today's ruling (PDF) provided by the High Court of Australia. Google had been ordered to pay Defteros $40,000 (about $27,710 in USD). But in reversing lower-court rulings, a 5-2 majority of the High Court found that Google did not publish the defamatory matter.
Google "did not lend assistance to The Age in communicating the defamatory matter contained in the Underworld article" because the "provision of a hyperlink in the Search Result merely facilitated access to the Underworld article and was not an act of participation in the bilateral process of communicating the contents of that article to a third party," the summary of the ruling said. "There was no other basis for finding publication because the appellant had not participated in the writing or disseminating of the defamatory matter." [...] Today's ruling could have been different if Google had been paid to promote The Age article. The appeal "does not present the occasion to consider whether the conclusion would be different in respect of those hyperlinks that, by agreement with a third party, are promoted by the appellant following a search request," the ruling said. "Nor was any issue raised on this appeal about any service provided in the aggregation of news results. It suffices to say that it is arguable that the appellant and a third party might share a common intention to publish the content of a third-party webpage that, as a consequence of an agreement between the appellant and the third party, is promoted as a search result."
Re: (Score:1)
Do you know what happens when you assume?
No normal, reasonable person would ever think that links provided by Google (or anyone else, since Google is not a special case) are to pages which won't contain misinformation. Seriously, find a person who would assume that, and immediate you'll realize that you hold that particular person in very low intellectual regard.
Re: Bad ruling (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Google provides more than hyperlinks. They also provide editorial control over what hyperlinks they present. There are many hyperlinks that are actively not presented by google due to censorship or due to concerns about misinformation. Therefore a person can assume that links provided by google are not misinformation. Google cannot have it both ways. If big tech would stick to simply indexing data they would be fine. But now they are deciding to be the gatekeeper.
By default Google indexes everything. The bot just crawls. There are cases where Google does remove links, but that is is generally the exception, based on specific scenarios. If you feel this isn’t the case, then please provide examples.
If the lower court decision were to have been accepted by the higher court, then Australia might as well have just disconnected the internet, since few people would have accepted the risk of linking if they automatically became liable for a site they don’t cont
Re: (Score:1)
ScoMo is fucked. RIP.
Re: (Score:2)
So, when George Defteros pops up as the Trump's new attorney, we should blame Google?"
Re: Bad ruling (Score:2)
Just indexing data doesn't do much good. The value Google has is in using that index and its algorithms to present relevant search results.
Very confusing ruling. (Score:4, Interesting)
Should Google be directly paid by the defamer / slanderer to be held liable? What if Google benefited financially by promoting defamatory material all over the corners of the world?
Re:Very confusing ruling. (Score:5, Insightful)
So if some paid advertisement contained defamatory material, would the publisher of the advertisement be held liable?
Yes. This is normally the case under defamation law in Australia. Three's a lot of established case law. With defamation it's standard practice to sue the publisher as well as the author because the publisher generally has deeper pockets. In this case the court decided that providing indexed hyperlink does not meet the legal definition of publication.
Should Google be directly paid by the defamer / slanderer to be held liable?
I think the distinction here is that automatic indexing does not meet the legal definition of publication because it's not intentional. Receiving payment would establish an intention to publish, but that does not preclude that a company could be liable for defamation if they intentionally published defamatory material without receiving payment.
What if Google benefited financially by promoting defamatory material all over the corners of the world?
I don't think a defamation victim will have a case in an Australian court if the defamation occurs in other countries. However previous case law has established that under Australian law a publisher can be liable for presenting defamatory material to readers in Australia even if the material is hosted on servers in other countries.
Re: (Score:2)
For something to be defamation, you need to know beforehand that the information is untrue and damaging as well as intentionally publishing it. Basically Google links to dozens of stories without knowing the actual content of them, therefore are not responsible for the content. It's like suing a story because they sell copies of the Daily Mail when the Daily Mail gets done for defamation (this happens on a regular basis, they consider defamation suits a