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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."
Well, in terms of speech anyway. I don't think this would fly in the US unless some other corporate behemoth was the victim of the libel.
can I sue Slashdot for libel? The bastards incorrectly put "Troll" and "Flamebait" next to my posts.
This happened weeks ago. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/google-hit-with-200000-damages-bill-over-mokbel-shots-20121112-297gk.html
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.- Shelley
So, if you file a claim with Google -- probably not even under oath -- stating that certain content is libel, Google would then have to take down their links to the content, lest the Australian courts find that content to be libel and hold Google liable.
Which means that if you have access to the Australian courts, you can effectively cause Google to take down any website* without a trial, at little risk to yourself.
Good to know.
* Note: Anonymous Coward is not liable for damages incurred in the event that you attempt to take down a website owned by people with more money than you.
Clearly this isn't a case of Google doing anything wrong. It's a case of a judge or jury not understanding how the internet works.
Google doesn't own the content. Unless the individual wants to sue every search provider on the planet to get the results removed, he needs to go after the publisher/owner of the content, and not the search engine.
There are days that I hope the evil corporations are all destroyed in a revolution. There are other days that I think we are getting exactly what we deserve. Especially when 'educated' folks make decisions like this.
Google probably has the ability to deal with the problem, if it spent money to write some custom code or pattern matching rule. But it sounds like the judges don't understand the Internet or imagine Google could conceivably do the same thing times the number of people in the world who imagine something is libelous at some time in their lives. I don't get what was wrong with what Google told him to do. Is there no higher court in Australia? Or does Google maybe want to wait a while for the society to change in its favor before testing it.
That's outrageous; it implies that a search engine is required to censor? That's exactly wrong.
How can Google be responsible for content that it's just indexing and not generating themselves? The site owner and/or content owner are responsible for libelous statements. By their "logic", /. could also be held liable just for reporting on this!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
But not before putting all links to Milorad Trkulja and all of his assets and associates on the Google search blacklist. Forever.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I am particularly amused by these types of decisions requiring a third party to correctly guess the outcome of legal matters they are not a party or face some form of liability either way for guessing wrongly.
Do they have book stores in Australia? Does this same abstraction of guilt work there too or just against huge companies with deep pockets?
What about networks thru which this data flows? Can network operators be found guilty for conspiracy to propogate libel? Where does it end and why?
I wish google would have dug up actual evidence supporting criminal affiliations against this asshat... I assume the truth is an absolute defense even in the Soviet Republic of Australia?
There's a very good reason. Google is an index, not a publisher.
Little details matter both in computing and in law.
You can't just ignore them.
Perhaps the geezer on the bench would understand this if put in terms of an antique card catalog.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Exactly. By analogy, a vendor could be selling newspapers, kept behind a counter, where you could only read the headline for each article on the front page. To actually read the article, you'd have to buy the paper. Google is the vendor, allowing you to read an abstract of the linked page. In either case, just reading the headline/abstract and suing the vendor/search engine based on that is ridiculous.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
As they did not shut down the electricity at the offending site. And since they also power the monitors and light here where I read it, double damages.
Gently reply
It's not Google's link to the content but Google Cache repoducing and redistributing the 'libelous' content.
This has an easy solution. Since Australia holds Google responsible for any and all web site content for any and all websites their search engine indexes, disconnect all of Australia from Google. This court and jury decision makes about as much sense as jailing a person who makes a sign pointing the direction to China for all the human rights abuses that happen in China.
Fuck you Judge David Beach.
Now sue me, you wombat fucking pervert.
The International Collation of Wombats are suing you for libel for comparing them to the Judge David Beach.
Be seeing you...
to remove all links to any content that refers to Mr. Trkulja and ALL ventures with which he is associated. Just CYA.
Or maybe if you were the judge in this case, you'd side with the guy who according to Google has connections to the local mafia. Wouldn't want to wake up next to a proverbial horse's head.
Google knows that its business is going to get a lot harder if they actually have to take some responsibility for the information they disseminate.
They can't just cache everyone's content, scan it, link it - make billions of dollars off of it - and then tell someone else to shove it when they are asked not to distribute illegal content.
witold.org
If you read the judgement (radical idea, I know), you'll see that a big part of the reason that Google was found liable here was the cached version of the article, as well as the Google Image Search results (which are a "page of Google's own making" not merely a link or reference to another source).
Indeed the judgement makes it quite clear that merely linking or indexing is not considered publication under Australian common law. Google themselves have been found not guilty in similar cases in Australia before, by relying on this defence. But this case was a bit different. There was the image search results, which Google must be assumed under the law to be the original publisher of (who else could be, given that the page is generated by Google and not exist anywhere else on the web?).
18 The question of whether or not Google Inc was a publisher is a matter of mixed fact and law. In my view, it was open to the jury to find the facts in this proceeding in such a way as to entitle the jury to conclude that Google Inc was a publisher even before it had any notice from anybody acting on behalf of the plaintiff. 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.
19 By parity of reasoning, those who operate libraries have sometimes been held to be publishers for the purposes of defamation law. That said, newsagents, librarians and the like usually avoid liability for defamation because of their ability to avail themselves of the defence of innocent dissemination (a defence which Google Inc was able to avail itself of for publications of the images matter prior to 11 October 2009, and all of the publications of the web matter that were the subject of this proceeding).
20 As was pointed out by counsel for the plaintiff in his address to the jury, the first page of the images matter (containing the photographs I have referred to and each named “Michael Trkulja” and each with a caption “melbournecrime”) was a page not published by any person other than Google Inc. It was a page of Google Inc’s creation – put together as a result of the Google Inc search engine working as it was intended to work by those who wrote the relevant computer programs. It was a cut and paste creation (if somewhat more sophisticated than one involving cutting word or phrases from a newspaper and gluing them onto a piece of paper). If Google Inc’s submission was to be accepted then, while this page might on one view be the natural and probable consequence of the material published on the source page from which it is derived, there would be no actual original publisher of this page.
I would suggest you read the judgement, starting at paragraph 18. The judge specifically talks about the newsagent analogy, and why this is different.
Not that that makes the judgement sensible at all, but remember, the judge has to apply the law as it exists, not as he'd LIKE it to be.
However, Google does indeed make it available for others to see. Without Google, there would be no way for the man to be libeled. That's a colonialist point of view you have there. Maybe, just maybe, others might think differently from us, and realize that society is in a new era where old mindsets don't apply. There is no 'right' and 'wrong', just different points of view, all of them equally correct.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"I assume the truth is an absolute defense even in the Soviet Republic of Australia" Whilst IANAL, my understanding for both libel & defamation that truth is NOT previously considered a valid defence everywhere. Truth (from http://www.thenewsmanual.net/Resources/medialaw_in_australia_02.html) Truth (which is also called justification) is probably the best defence. Formerly in some states (such as NSW, Queensland, Tasmania and the ACT) truth was only a defence if you could prove that a ‘public interest’ was served by publishing the defamatory words. This requirement has been dropped from the Uniform Defamation Law and now there is a defence if the defendant can prove that the defamatory imputations are substantially true.
Our illustrious government & law-makers...fucking it up royally since 1838! :)))
God save the Queen & all of us lol !!!
There's a very good reason. Google is an index, not a publisher.
Not entirely. Google does re-publish excerpts of the sites it lists. If Google were a 100% pure index, your search results would look like this:
But Google does include parts of the result pages, and thus does re-publish content from elsewhere. They didn't create it, true. But neither does your radio station create most of the content it is publishing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
How is Google Image Search results a "page of Google's own making" any more than any text+url index search result is?
Yes, they cache the images so that you can actually search them but none of the images are first published by Google or originate from Google.
Unless they mean "technically" the thumbnails which is complete bullshit and bogus (the thumbnails are completely analogous to the small context text blurb on text search).
Or maybe they mean the time it takes for Google's spider to find out that that the original images have been taken down and no longer exist and thus need to be removed?
Problem: Some jerk publishes a book that libels me.
Solution: Sue the library!
Derp.
If caching is the same as publishing, proxy providers (some of which are ISP-provided) are in for some trouble.
Once Google started manually fucking with the results and rankings, they became responsible for the content as they were no longer simply a passive repository.
Oh I agree, it's stupid. An effect of old law being applied to a new medium that it's not suited for.
The court's argument is simply that:
- A page of content has an 'original' publisher.
- The Google Image Search results page is generated by Google, and that page does not exist anywhere else on the web.
- Therefore, Google must be the publisher, simply because no-one else can be.
The issue as far as I can tell is that the concept of 'original publisher' doesn't work well in a world where 'publications' can be ~dynamically~ generated. The image search results is indeed a unique page that doesn't exist anywhere else, but it's really just an amalgamation of content from other sources, presented in a particular way...
The reason the internet revolution did not originate in Australia.
1) Create a web presence.
2) Have a sock monkey libel you
2a) (Google indexes the libelous site, as they do everything.)
3) Sue Google
4) $$Profit!!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Shakedown
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
He should have had more sense than to draw attention to this. Now the mob lawyers will sue HIS arse off for implying he was associated in any way with their honest businesses AND for calling them out as mobsters. And that's if he's lucky. Ahem.
LOL! (no, not at child rape, just the sentiment ;)
Hey can we load up Google's search engine rankings so any searches for "Milorad Trkulja" come back with goatse.cx (or current equivalent) as top ranked...? <BFG>
I thought it was Mexicans anyway? Or was that what the slow dimwits up north call both of us...?
Anyway, I've spent time in both Sydney/NSW & Qld & have no desire or inclination whatsoever to repeat either experience, unless someone is paying me top dollar. :) In fact, Antarctica is much higher on my bucket list than Sydney, the Vegas/Sodom of Australia! ;-p
Maybe they got them from Britain.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There is caching and there is caching.
A caching proxy merely serves content that was specifically requested. Google's 'cache' is serving images that Google themselves are associating with a word or phrase. Thus Google is making some sort of editorial decisions in regards to the content that a simple proxy is not. Now that "editorial decision" may be being made by an algorithm and that algorithm may make it's decisions based on other peoples content but at the end of the day Google is in a very real sense curating that content.
It's a fine line (or perhaps a wide, murky continuum) but in the pursuit of being more useful to people Google has in many senses moved from a 'mere' indexer to an aggregator/publisher. As such it is probably not surprising that simply saying "hey, it's not us, we just link to what's there" doesn't always apply.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Great,
1. Create a website writing bad about yourself
2. Make sure it gets intot he google seach engine
3. tell google to remove
4. Sue google and collect $200.000
Google is like a classifieds newspaper for the internet. If a classified newspaper was told that an ad they're publishing is libellous and they decided to keep publishing the ad, they would likely be held responsible.
Theres another issue at play here.
The original website had already removed the libelous material. So if this were in fact a dynamically generated webpage, the images shouldn't be there anymore. As the source of them was removed.
The images were there because google made copies of it and stores them.
The indexing defense would work for me if the libelous material was still available from its original source, and dynamically generating an index of that isn't really publishing. However, they are making an index based on their cache, the cache which is no longer valid, and exists on their own servers.
That's what making it publishing.
Google needed just to refresh their cache and the material would be gone, and the plaintiff gave plenty occasion and reason to do just that.
Good catch, and yeah, that is a pretty solid argument. Mod parent up :)
So you fuck wombats too, eh?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I'd suggest a simple test: can the so called libelous material be found without goodgle? (say, using another gateway site like excite, or bing) If so, then clearly google isn't the only route to this material, and shouldn't be held liable for it. (another argument would be: wny are you only suing Google when all these other indexes also have links to it? )
Kevin Seghetti: kts@tenetti.org, HTTP: www.tenetti.org GPG key: http://tenetti.org/phpwiki/index.php/KevinSeghett
And it's not just a free speech issue. It sets google up as worldwide content editor! Really Really BAD!