Australian appeals court rules Google did not defame man
A Melbourne appeals court said Google is not responsible for defamation of a man based on the images shown in the search results.
The Guardian reports that an appeals court in Australia has ruled that Google did not defame a man for showing images of the man when a search was done for [Melbourne underworld criminals].
An older case dates back to 2012, when Google lost a defamation case and was ordered to pay $208,000 in fines to the plaintiff, Milorad Trkulja.
The appeals court just ruled that Google in fact did not defame the man. The Australian judges held that Google could not be held to be publisher of the allegedly defamatory material. In addition, they also found the material on which Milorad Trkulja sued was not capable of conveying any defamatory meanings, according to the Guardian.
The court added that for a search engine to produce results that could defame someone was “acute.”
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