Australia's top court rules Google not liable for defamation

Australia's highest court on Wednesday overturned a ruling that Google defamed a controversial newspaper article by linking to it, shedding new light on how online defamation cases are handled in the country.

The seven-judge panel of the High Court of Australia voted 5-2 to overturn an earlier finding that the Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc unit played a role in publishing the article by acting as a "library" hosting the disputed article, saying the website had no active role. The ruling brings new confusion to the long-standing question in Australia of where responsibility for online defamation lies. A years-long review of the country's defamation law has yet to make a final recommendation on whether major platforms such as Google and Meta Platforms' Facebook (NASDAQ:META) should be liable. According to the published ruling, the case stems from a 2004 article suggesting that a criminal defense lawyer overstepped professional boundaries and became a "confidant" of criminals. The ruling said that lawyer George Defteros found a link to the article in a Google search of his name in 2016 and that Google removed the link after it was viewed by 150 people. Defteros sued in a state court, which found that Google was a publisher and ordered it to pay him A$40,000 ($28,056). Google appealed the decision, resulting in Wednesday's ruling. "The Underworld article was not written by any employee or agent of the appellant," two of the jurors representing the appellant Google said in Wednesday's ruling. "It was written by a reporter with no connection to the appellant and published by an independent newspaper over which the appellant has no control or influence." Google "does not own or control the internet," they wrote. Defteros said in a statement that the process had been "long, exhausting, expensive and extremely stressful" but that Google felt vindicated that the court had recognized that the article was defamatory, even though it was not Google's responsibility. The ruling comes after the Supreme Court last year found a newspaper publisher liable for defamatory comments left under an article it posted on Facebook. The justices noted that the difference between the Facebook case in 2021 and Wednesday's case was that last year the media companies "invited and encouraged comments" while Google "did not provide a forum or place to post comments or encourage comments in response".