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Google Found Guilty of Libel For Search Results In Australia
Meshach writes "Google has been found guilty for refusing to take down a libelous search result in an Australian court (ruling). Music promoter Milorad Trkulja sued Google for refusing to take down links to website articles promoting libelous claims that Trkulja was connected to organized crime in Melbourne. Google told Trkulja to contact the sites on which the offensive materials were posted, as those webmasters controlled the content. But the Supreme Court of Victoria decided Google was responsible for removing the damaging links the moment Trkulja asked them to remove the content. As a result of the jury's decision in the case, Google will have to pay $200,000 in damages to Trkulja."
Doesn't matter if they own the content or not. If you repeat a libel, prefacing it with the words "According to xyz..." doesn't remove your liability. No reason a seach engine should be treated differently.
If a troll decides to libel you all over the internet, the first thing you'll do will likely be to go to Google and kindly request that they strip out the results because, duh, it's libel. Google can argue all it wants that they're not responsible for the content on the sites that post it. And rightly so, as a matter of fact. Regardless, they link to it -- complete with abstract -- meaning they actively participate in the libel campaign. They're thus potentially as liable as the guy who posted the libel in question. If a troll was spamming trash at you all over the internet and Google (or Bing) wasn't linking to it, you simply wouldn't care.
It's about damn time a judge finally gave a decision in favor of the victim here.
This additionally has nothing to do with free speech, either. Libel is libel -- free speech doesn't allow you to spread outright lies about someone or some entity. You can argue whether it's libel or not in court; but once it's established it's libel, Google should be just as liable as the source for merely linking to it.