The law has undoubtedly encountered difficulties processing the concept of such publishing; namely, what counts as ‘published’ in the true sense? Does it solely apply to printed material represented by books, newspapers and journals?
Well, no, unless you’ve been living on a desert island for the past decade (and even that probably has Wi-Fi access). A publisher is a provider of written information to an audience; the internet has borne the largest global audience ever. No arguments there.
Consider Google Inc. With an estimated market cap at around $170 billion, it’s probably the most valuable portal to online content. But is it a publisher?
After the year that Google’s had, anyone who’s vaguely switched on to digital media will know that ‘publisher’ is a scant term for Google; it’s so much more than this. At a basic level, Google is: an aggregator; an advertiser; a directory; a search engine; an archive; an open source web browser; a personalised information centre; a provider of maps, blogs, videos, images, news, health, finance, analytics Sat Nav etc.; an online library; a mobile (and future desktop) operating system; an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration; and an online/offline document storage system. It would take many more words to describe its true purpose and value, so I’ll leave it for now and get back to the case in point.
In Metropolitan International Schools Ltd v (1) Designtechnica Corporation (2) Google UK Ltd & (3) Google Inc [2009] EWHC 1765 (QB), Google Inc was found not to be the publisher of defamatory comments against the claimant, and therefore not liable for them. The snippets of text, links and other breadcrumbs leading to the results its search engine generates, make it a ‘facilitator’, NOT a publisher.
The judgment brought up issues over the remit of search engines and who’s liable for defamatory online content. The fact that Google removed a few of the offending URLs suggests that even though it (rightly) won’t accept responsibility for everything it publishes (it would be nigh-on impossible to monitor every single automatically generated piece of content), it’s still willing to fulfil its ‘non-evil’ agenda by helping out now and then. Especially when it’s taken to court.
However, with a mission statement “to organise the world’s information” (surely the job of a publisher?) there’s a definite overlap of purpose with Google. Online publishing is a relatively new model, and very few precedents have been set. It will be interesting to see how Google Inc and other publishers (yes, I’m including search engine providers in this category) are treated by the law as they continue to expand their online portfolios.
In Metropolitan International Schools Ltd v (1) Designtechnica Corporation (2) Google UK Ltd & (3) Google Inc [2009] EWHC 1765 (QB), Google Inc was found not to be the publisher of defamatory comments against the claimant, and therefore not liable for them. The snippets of text, links and other breadcrumbs leading to the results its search engine generates, make it a ‘facilitator’, NOT a publisher.
The judgment brought up issues over the remit of search engines and who’s liable for defamatory online content. The fact that Google removed a few of the offending URLs suggests that even though it (rightly) won’t accept responsibility for everything it publishes (it would be nigh-on impossible to monitor every single automatically generated piece of content), it’s still willing to fulfil its ‘non-evil’ agenda by helping out now and then. Especially when it’s taken to court.
However, with a mission statement “to organise the world’s information” (surely the job of a publisher?) there’s a definite overlap of purpose with Google. Online publishing is a relatively new model, and very few precedents have been set. It will be interesting to see how Google Inc and other publishers (yes, I’m including search engine providers in this category) are treated by the law as they continue to expand their online portfolios.
Gareth Lloyd
Director of Product and Digital, totallylegal
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