Report from The Guardian In a filing released by Google over the weekend, the company said it would be forced to “act as a moderator”, and that this would be extremely difficult if Australia’s highest court did not Overturn the decision in mid-2020.
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Google wants Australia’s supreme court to overturn the ruling that it lost to Defteros in 2020 |
Back in 2016, George Defteros, a Victorian attorney, sued Google when its search results linked his name to members of a Melbourne gang. George Defteros had previously been charged with attempted murder, but the charge was dropped in 2005. Even so, in 2016-2017, Google’s search results still showed these contents. , and Google refuses to remove the article from its search results because it considers the publication to be a reputable source.
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Ultimately, the matter went to court and Defteros was the winner after successfully proving the article and Google search results smeared him. The Victorian Court of Appeal in 2020 rejected a request by Google to overturn the ruling.
From Google’s point of view, the problem is rooted in one of the fundamental foundations of the internet. “A hyperlink itself is not the communication it links to,” the company argues. If the 2020 ruling is upheld, Google announced it would hold itself “responsable as a publisher for any matter published on a site where its search results provide links”, including articles from reputable sources.
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