In the first case of its kind in Britain, a businessman is suing Google for the publication of material on the internet that is malicious, inaccurate or damaging. The thrust of the legal action is to make search engines accountable for internet content.
Should the case be upheld, the implications would be enormous. The current virtually unrestricted, free flow of information on the web would be throttled under severe restrictions. For Google, it would mean accountability for everything on its 11.5 billion web pages, even though its search engines merely index the material, not create it.
The plaintiff in the case is Brian Retkin, managing director of dotWORLDS Ltd, a company dealing in the registration of domain names. In anonymous postings on an internet forum, Retkin was wrongly accused of cashing in on the 9/11 terrorist attacks and of fraudulent business dealings. Through Google's search engines, users were directed to web pages containing these "deeply offensive and commercially damaging" allegations against him and his company.
It is believed the false allegations came from somewhere in the United States but the anonymous postings make it difficult to sue for libel.
Though Retkin has received the cooperation of forum moderators to have the offending material removed from forum postings, these allegations soon appear elsewhere at other internet addresses where it is picked up by Google's search engine. Retkin says he has spent three years trying to get Google to remove these libellous accusations from its search engine results. He feels that is the only solution.
The lawsuit highlights a fundamental difference between U.S. law and British law. Third party internet service and product providers such as search engines have been declared immune from defamation lawsuits in the United States. In Britain, such protection is conditional that the company has not received complaints of defamation.
Retkin, through his attorney, has sent a formal letter of complaint of defamation to Google, setting the stage to test British law.
Google claims it has blacklisted the links in question and the libellous allegations Retkin complained of. The company's legal representative also maintains that:
Google is not responsible for the content of any result of a query which may be presented to a user of Google's websearch service. Google has absolutely no connection, control or ability to direct or influence the content of web pages which may be shown as links within any given set of search results. The infinitely variable terms in which searches can be made [any query which a human being can conceive of] are obviously not within Google's control, nor should they be.
Even if search engines were able to filter out defamatory material, it would be through blocking "combinations of words." That would also result in blocking access to lawful websites.
Brian Retkin sums up his frustration at his situation in these words:
There comes a point when someone must take responsibility for this material. At the moment Google and other search engines are protected by the law but the victim of the defamation is forgotten. Neither does the law take account of innocent third-parties who in good faith rely on material found in an internet search and then can end up getting sued for defamation.
Last year the California Supreme court ruled that bloggers, U.S. internet service providers and product providers could not be held accountable for defamatory postings by third parties.
Landmark Lawsuit Could Bring Google to Standstill
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