Court Rules - Wrongly - That Google Is A Publisher

An Australian court made a huge mistake Monday. It ruled that Google can be treated as a publisher for the content of its search results - and therefore be found guilty of libel. If the ruling stands, Google will owe $200,000 to music promoter Milorad Trkulja, who sued Google because content on other websites linked him to criminal activity, and Google's algorithm displayed those sites in search results for him. According to a report in the Guardian, the offending materials suggested that Trkulja was a criminal and that rivals had hired a hitman to kill him. Though he had been shot in a restaurant in 2004, Trkulja has never been convicted of any criminal activity. But people said otherwise on the Web, and they published images as well, so Google did its job and indexed those search results. Who's Fault Is It? Trkulja's lawyers began contacting Google in 2009 asking for these search resul...