Australian court rules on cross-border Web defamation

Dow Jones lost its motion to have a libel suit that had been brought by an Australian mining magnate heard in the United States instead of in the plaintiff's home state of Victoria, down under.

Apparently, a weathly and quite litigious [careful here, Egan, Ed.] Mr. Joseph Gutnick had taken legal action against the US-based news service for an article on the Barron's website hosted by The Wall Street Journal.

If this ruling stands, it will mean that any material published on the Internet will be seen in the eyes of the law to have been published in the place where it is viewed online, not the country where webserved.

And that will undoubtedly have a pronounced chilling effect on the web.

The story is at The Age here. µ

See also:
Oz puts Internet on trial