Legal Research

Court clears Google search in defamation case

By scott

The High Court has ruled that Google cannot be can be regarded as a publisher of alleged defamatory statements found on a third party site by means of a snippet of text returned in its search results generated from the combination of terms.

The Court was hearing a request by Google to set aside a Masters Order serving notice on them to appear in an English Court to defend claims of publishing/republishing alleged defamatory / libellous claims against Metropolitan International Schools (t/a SkillStrain and/or Train2game) published on the forums of the Designtechnica (t/a Digital Trends) website.

“Since 25 March 2009 or around 25 March 2009, on each occasion that an Internet search is performed on ‘Train2Game’ the Second and/or Third Defendant published or caused to be published at www.google.co.uk and/or www.google.com a search return for the Train2Game thread which for 3 weeks preceding the date of these particulars set out the following words defamatory of the Claimant as the third and fourth highest search result:
‘Train2Game new SCAM for Scheidegger’ ? “

According to Google, California would have be the correct place to bring the action, as there would be no enforceable remedies from pursuing case in UK court. They also stated they had no responsibility for the publication of the words complained of; that a decision against them would harm freedom of expression and create a chilling effect on the internet; and that the case against Google UK should be dismissed because it does not operate the google search engine.

The Court very quickly realised that the workings and functions of a web search engine meant that Google cannot be characterised as a publisher at common law, and would be unrealistic to attribute responsibility for publication to Google , whether on the basis of authorship or acquiescence as it had “not authorised or caused the snippet to appear on the user’s screen in any meaningful sense. It has merely, by the provision of its search service, played the role of a facilitator.”

It went on to say that even after it had been informed about the ‘defamatory’ material, its policies for blocking access to such material were legally sound, acknowledging that it has blocked access from www.google.co.uk to the specific URLs identified on behalf of the Claimant. The court did say there may be room for debate as to what further blocking steps it would be open for it to take, or how effective they might be ? the block does not stop people searching on www.google.com ? but said it was not Google’s job to actively police the web for instances where the words complained of ‘popped up’.

As a result the court held that the claimant had “no reasonable prospect of success” in its case against Google. Interestingly, the court would have thrown out the Masters order in any event due to what it classified as serious misrepresentations and omissions in the evidence placed before the Master in support of the application to serve out.

Comment: This seems to be a common sense decision. Justice Eady did not seem to have too much difficulty finding that Google would not be liable under common law. This does not stop him exploring potential liability had he not found them in the clear under common law and he looks at the implications of the Ecommece regs 2002,  the Defamation Act 1996,  as well as the UK’s limited case-law in this area: Godfrey v Demon and Bunt v Tilley.?

Full post as published by Information Overload on July 21, 2009 (boomark / email).