Australia’s Supreme Court states that the country’s media are to be regarded as publishers, and are thus responsible for third party posts on their Facebook pages.
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On Wednesday, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from some of the country’s largest media. The court decision they wanted to appeal allows the media to be sued for defamation.
Dylan Voller, a former detainee at a juvenile detention center in the state of Northern Territory, took the media companies to court over defamatory comments on their Facebook pages.
Voller sued TV channels and newspapers for comments on the Facebook pages of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Centralian Advocate, Sky News Australia and The Bolt Report.
But the case stopped as a result of the question of whether the media were to be regarded as publishers of the comments.
The companies emphasized that they only manage a public Facebook page where others could post comments. They compared themselves to those who deliver the paper that a newspaper is printed on, and argued that one must be aware of the defamatory content and intend to publish it in order to be considered a publisher.
The Supreme Court did not allow itself to be persuaded and says the companies’ actions “facilitate, encourage and thus assist the publication of comments” from Facebook users, which makes them publishers of such comments.
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