The American multinational technology company, Google has been ordered to pay Australian Dollars 715,000 to an ex-Australian Politician. The court gave the judgement after Google refused to remove defamatory videos of the politician from YouTube. The former politician has claimed that because of these false and misleading videos about him on YouTube he was forced to leave politics.
The court of justice has found that Alphabet Inc was deliberately making money by presenting the two videos which were misleading against the former lawmaker. As per reports, these videos have been viewed around 800,000 times since it was posted.
This judgement brings around the point that a tech company is equally responsible for the slander of a person done by any user on their platform in Australia along with the accused user. Australia follows a law where tech websites have the same responsibilities as the publishers on their websites.
According to the ruling, Google refused to admit that the videos contained any libel accusations. Furthermore, to defend itself the company said that the publisher of the video has the right to an honestly held opinion.
Prof. David Ralph said that the company was earlier informed about two libel videos but after looking into the matter they concluded all bu themselves that the content wasn’t defamatory. So, they decided to leave those videos as they were.
Jordan Shanks, the content creator who posted the videos posed the ex-politician John Barilaro as corrupt in them without giving any valid proof. Moreover, he called him by name which attacked Barilaro’s Italian heritage. The law lord called this nothing but hate speech.
The law lord added that Google allowing the man to share the contents further made them break their policy which focused on securing famous personalities from getting targeted falsely. It also forced the ex-politician to leave the public service he choose and distressed him.
The Judge also said that the company can not escape from its responsibility for the considerable damage that Shank’s videos have caused.
Barilaro expressed his satisfaction with the ruling. He said to the reporters taht he is now absolved and clear from the blame. He also said he didn’t file the case to receive the money but it was to get an apology and remove the content from YouTube. He should his despondence towards Google by saying that a law court had to force Google to take down the videos.
