Aus court rapped over web ruling
2002-12-11 19:51
Sydney - Australia's highest court was accused on Wednesday of jeopardising the communications revolution over a landmark ruling which academics and media said would "dumb down" the internet, and may breach international civil rights covenants.
In what is believed to be a world first, the High Court ruled on Tuesday that online publishers could be sued for defamation in the place where their material is viewed, not the country of origin where it is uploaded.
Matthew Ciolek, head of internet publications at Canberra's Australian National University described the ruling as "disastrous", arguing it had implications far beyond defamation laws and the media.
"Anyone who puts information on the internet is a publisher, so individuals could find themselves being sued for blasphemy or indecency if someone halfway around the world takes offence," he said.
"It's a Luddite decision that reminds me of the laws that were brought in when the motor car was introduced requiring a runner with a red flag to travel ahead of it to warn the public of the dangerous new technology."
He said online publishers would have to avoid controversial material, resulting in content that was "bland, dumbed down, like soggy cardboard".
The High Court unanimously dismissed an appeal by international news service Dow Jones to have a defamation action brought by Australian mining magnate Joseph Gutnick heard in the United States, rather than Gutnick's home state of Victoria.
Canberra Times columnist Jack Waterford said some of the seven high Court judges who dismissed the appeal appeared to be working on the assumption that "every internet publisher is a wicked capitalist doing so for profit".
He said the court's focus on issues of defamation and reputation ignored the rights of individuals, libraries and universities to freedom of expression.
University of Tennessee's internet law specialist, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, said the court cited a guarantee in the International Covenant on Civil Rights to protect reputations without referring to its commitments to the right to hold opinions without interference and the right to free expression.
"The Gutnick decision would seem to put all of this in peril," he wrote in The Australian, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporate Limited.
Reynolds warned the decision could halt the communications revolution, a theme echoed by The Australian's editorial under the headline "A dark day for the internet".
It said the judges had allowed themselves to become entrapped by common law precedent "and the inglorious history of defamation law as a tool of the powerful".
"The freer flow of information made possible by the internet is one of the great hopes of the oppressed to overthrow their tyrants," it said.
While regretting its free speech implications, the Australian Financial Review said long-standing defamation principles "dictated that Gutnick should be able to seek redress in the jurisdiction where he lives, does business and claims his business has been harmed".
Nicholas Pullen, a media lawyer at law firm Holding Redlich, defended the decision, saying much of the reaction had been hysterical.
He said the ruling treated the internet as no different to any other medium and included safeguards against vexatious litigation that could smother online debate.
"Free-speech advocates need not fear a muzzle being placed on the freedom of expression made available by the internet. Potential actions arising in every country around the world may exist in theory but the reality is otherwise," he wrote in The Age of Melbourne.
Pullen said he hoped the ruling would mark the beginning of a more rational and measured approach to the legal ramifications of the internet. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA