Rupert Murdoch Learns Why Intermediary Liability Protections Matter: Australia Says Media Orgs Can Be Sued Over Facebook Comments

Rupert Murdoch Learns Why Intermediary Liability Protections Matter: Australia Says Media Orgs Can Be Sued Over Facebook Comments

3 years ago
Anonymous $drS9DEX_Sj

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210908/11501047524/rupert-murdoch-learns-why-intermediary-liability-protections-matter-australia-says-media-orgs-can-be-sued-over-facebook-comments.shtml

Ah, Australia. The country down under has always taken an upside down view on intermediary liability laws -- quite quick to blame an intermediary for 3rd party content. Two years ago we wrote about a problematic ruling in Australia based on the idea that media companies (not just social media companies) could be held liable for comments on Facebook about their stories. Any common sense thinking would immediately reveal how ridiculous this is: how can a media company be held liable for someone else's comments on someone else's website? Well, the judge noted, because they could hack Facebook and insert a filter to block comments on their stories with the 100 most common English words, as a form of pre-vetting every comment. I'm not kidding:

The judge wrote that each company had the power to effectively delay reader comments on Facebook and monitor if they were defamatory before "releasing" them to the audience.