Google not responsible for defamatory comments, rules High Court

Maisie McCabe, mediaweek.co.uk

Online publishers, and not search engines such as Google who aggregate their content, are responsible for defamatory comments made on the web, according to a landmark ruling in the High Court last week.

The lawyer who acted for Google, Jaron Lewis, a media partner at the City firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP (RPC), said the High Court's decision was a "groundbreaking first ruling" by the UK courts.

Mr Justice Eady found that Google "cannot be characterised as a publisher" for comments made on the bulletin boards of Designtechnica Corporation, which trades as Digital Trends, which appeared on Google search results.

Lewis said the Court made it clear that "individuals who are unhappy with web content need to take action against the people responsible for the material, not search engine operators".

Eady said when search results are generated, Google "has not authorised or caused the snippet to appear on the user's screen in any meaningful sense and it has merely played the role of a facilitator".

Lewis added that Google's team demonstrated to the Court that blocking search terms would have resulted in a "significant amount of lawful, unrelated material on the web being blocked" and would have been "unworkable" and a "significant interference with freedom of speech".The case against Designtechnica Corporation continues.