Loading ...A former music promoter from Melbourne, Australia is taking search engine giant Yahoo! to court! He claims that search results made him look like a criminal!
Michael Trkulja was the victim of a shooting last year. As a result of this unfortunate incident when Australian Yahoo! users searched ‘Melbourne crime’ an image of the man appeared among the results. Because of the way results were presented it appeared as if he featured on a page called ‘Melbourne Crime’ as a member of the crime scene.
Trkulja says the overall effect is that users will believe him to be a criminal figure who was tracked down by a paid hit man.
As it is Yahoo! being sued for slander, the question arises as to whether a search engine actually publishes anything. If it is deemed not to be the case, it cannot be held liable. There are also questions as to where such a case should be tried if the company being sued is not Australian and its servers are located somewhere else.
In a comparable case in the UK, Demon Internet were held liable for a post published on a Usenet newsgroup as they ran the server. The theme of the offensive post had got in touch with Demon asking them to remove it, therefore it was clear that they were aware of it and were held accountable.
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