Linking to news doesn’t make Google liable for defamation, Australia court rules

Australia's highest court ruled today that hyperlinks to other websites can't be used to prove defamation. Providing a URL isn't part of the communication of defamatory matter which happens to be at that address. The High Court of Australia ruled that a hyperlink is merely a tool that allows a person to navigate to another website.

The case is related to a 2004 article in The Age titled " Underworld loses valued friend at court" On the day before the article was published, a lawyer in Australia was charged with conspiracy to murder. In 2005, the charge was withdrawn.

A search of his name on the internet resulted in a link to an article and a small excerpt. The article wasn't removed from the search results despite a request from the author.

The lower-court judge found that the Underworld article implied that the Respondent had crossed the line from being a professional solicitor to being a friend of criminal elements.

The order to pay was made by the court. In reversing lower-court rulings, a majority of the High Court found that the matter was not published by the search engine.

Hyperlink “merely facilitated access”

The provision of a hyperlink in the search result was not an act of participation in the bilateral process of communicating the contents of the Underworld article to a third. The only reason for finding publication was that the person who wrote and disseminated the defamatory matter did not participate in the writing or dissemination of the publication.

The article's author was sued over a book that contained a chapter that was based on the article. Changes to the book were made after the case was settled.

If The Age article had been paid for, the ruling today would have been different. There is no reason to consider whether the conclusion would be different in respect of those hyperlinks that are promoted by an agreement with a third party. No issues were raised about any service provided in the aggregation of news results. It is possible that the content of a third-party website could be published by the two parties if they agree to promote it as a search result.

The Communications Decency Act of the US states that no provider or user of an interactive computer service will be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. While there have been calls to change the law, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says Section 230 has allowed innovation and free speech online to flourish.