By Melissa Henderson on October 28, 2015. Categories: Business.
Historical article
This article describes the position when it was originally published. Some laws, regulators and procedures have since changed. Defamation laws, including the rules for search engines and other digital intermediaries, have changed since this article was written, and later decisions such as the High Court’s 2022 judgment in Google LLC v Defteros have narrowed when a search engine is treated as a publisher. Please contact us for current advice.
DO YOU HAVE BAD REVIEWS ON THE INTERNET TURNING YOUR CUSTOMERS AWAY AND HARMING YOUR REPUTATION?
The Supreme Court of South Australia has upheld a claim made by a health researcher against Google for defamation due to Google failing to remove links to harmful material against the Plaintiff on a “shaming” website. The Plaintiff asked Google to remove the links to the offending material in September 2009. It did not do so until after she issued legal proceedings in February 2011.
Justice Malcolm Blue stated that it is a well-established principle that search engine operators and website hosts are “secondary” publishers of data. They can therefore be liable for defamation unless they can prove that they had no knowledge of the defamatory content. They will have knowledge of the offending content once a complaint is made by the offended party. Damages are yet to be determined.
Hendersons Legal has acted for several clients in removing bad reviews from the internet. Negative reviews can be devastating for business. They will often appear high in the search rankings due to the organic ranking of the review site if it is large and used often. In once case, a terrible review of our builder client was repeated on the same “review” website for at least one other builder word for word strongly indicating the false nature of the publication. The review was removed within 24 hours. Every case is different and we can’t guarantee that a review will be removed, but don’t assume nothing can be done and this new South Australian case should increase the burden on search engine operators and website hosts to be more vigilant and responsive in the future.
If you would like to speak to a business lawyer in Melbourne who can help with such matters, then contact us for a chat today.
