In Britain, Judge Finds for Google in Libel Case

Thought this was an interesting little case given the finding that:



Now granted it doesn't directly apply to Wikipedia, since Wikipedia provides both search and hosting facilities, but the article did go out of its way to point out that this decision was the first of its kind in the UK and similar to US and other EU decisions.

I imagine that any nation who has unique applications of laws is finding that the leveling of globalization is forcing them to reassess if they can maintain those unique laws in light of global competition (U.S. farm subsidies, FR/DE labor protections, Swiss banks, etc). If it is true, as the article says, that the UK has uniquely firm interpretations of libel laws, than I wouldn't be surprised to see more UK jurists moving the law over the next couple of years towards a more liberal approach to these kinds of libel cases.

Well you could argue that if you are viewing the page version that google has cached, it is both hosting and providing search facilities too.

Somehow I don't think a judge would accept at face value the notion that Google's search engine and Wikimedia's encyclopedia are identical services for legal purposes. You might be able to show that the same standards should apply to both as hands-off facilitators of information delivery, but it wouldn't be through them to being considered identical services.

This finding is far, far, more relevant to torrent indexing sites. It basically says "torrent indexing is a-ok", which was what The Pirate Bay (heard of them?) was sentenced for. Since that case will probably go on to the European Court of Justice, this means the UK has essentially said "TPB was innocent". OK, back to the Wikipedia bashing...!

Seems that defamation and copyright is all in a muddle here. I doubt that The Pirate Bay defamed anyone.

The Pirate Bay was, essentially, sentenced for linking to copyrighted material. Seems identical to this case, Google linking to defamatory material. Neither hosted it. I'm not a lawyer though...

Defamation is about speech and has many important concerns relating to value of allowing free expression. Copyright is about property, not speech and does not raise those concerns. Better arguments can be made for why a website should be permitted to facilitate speech, even if defamation might result, than why a website should be permitted to facilitate theft. Wikipedia facilitates or directly engages in both defamation and copyright violation.

Well, that is an important distinction. But the Swedish legal system doesn't make it. Freedom of speech here basically includes saying "Go to place X, and there will be somebody there giving you free heroin and a machine gun" and anything else. This will undoubtedly lead to a big collision between Swedish law and EU law soon.

Wow, I want one of those machine guns.

Have you heard of solicitation? It's a crime--even in Britain, as "encouraging or assisting a crime," I think. Encouraging people to commit a crime with mere words is generally also a crime.

At any rate, contributory copyright infringement is not the same as defamation, let alone speech. They are distinguishable and are in fact are distinguished.

For comparison, most defamation cases in the US lose, and this Google case looks like it would have been a big fat loser under the CDA. That does not mean that US courts are saying "TPB is innocent." In all likelihood, their contributory infringement would be treated more harshly here.

You'll need to go to Butler, Missouri to pick it up.

Ya. There is a reason it took almost a decade for TPB to be sued under Swedish law despite the continued attempts of Hollywood studios and record companies, and when it happened, it was very unclear whether or not they actually broke any laws here, or if the court simply misunderstood what the site does. The ruling and subsequent debate here has been quite confused. (What US courts would say is not very relevant, of course).