Defamation is always going to be a tricky subject on the internet. For the most part you’ve got outdated laws policing a technological platform that didn’t even exist when they were drafted.

Couple that with problematic worldwide jurisdiction, internet companies making billions and clueless internet users will dollar signs in their eyes and you’ve got a melting pot of litigation.

One such clueless internet user is Melbourne man Michael Trkulja.

Internet search engines cache snippets of the internet and present them in a searchable index for the general public. Common sense would dictate they don’t actually (inhouse content aside) create the vast majority of material published on the internet.

Search engines do have typically have a lot of money though and that makes them a target for money hungry opportunists.

Michael Trkulja was having dinner in 2004 with his mother in a St. Albans restaurant (the western suburbs, surprise surprise), when he was shot in the back by a man wearing a balaclava.

The police investigated and found no link between the shooting and Melbourne’s underworld. That however didn’t stop Trkulja from launching legal action against Google, Yahoo and Utah based hosting company BizHosting.

Some news reports are mentioning Yahoo and some are mentioning Google so I’m not sure if both were named in the court case or if Trkulja is suing them separately.

Here’s an article from News.com.au on Trkulja suing Google and another from APCMag on Trkulja and Yahoo.

For the purposes of this article I’ll just refer to them as ‘the search engines’, assuming Trkulja is looking to double his earnings and is suing both.

BizHosting were the company hosting the well known ‘Melbourne Crime: A journey into the Melbourne Underworld’ website. Originally hosted at http:/melbournecrime.bizhosting.com the site no longer works.

Trkulja insists that when someone punched his name into a search engine, the results displayed from the Melbourne Underworld website wrongfully linked Trkulja to Melbourne’s underworld.

Trkulja is ‘suing on the basis that the Yahoo page made it look like he was a criminal in the Melbourne crime scene, and so much so that someone had hired a hit-man to kill him.’

…really?

Not being a part of it I don’t profess to be an expert on Melbourne’s underworld but surely you need a bit more to go on then an internet search if you’re going to call in the hitmen?

Presumably Trkulja is claiming that he doesn’t have anything to do with the Melbourne Underworld, which then begs the question why was he shot? I mean if he truly doesn’t have anything to do with it, why would someone go and shoot him based off a search result? I’d have thought he’d have had to have done something, alleged or otherwise for there to be motive to kill.

Furthermore a police investigation found there to be no connection between the Melbourne Underworld and the Trkulja shooting.

So why was he shot?

Well one reasons could be that the western suburbs, let alone St Albans are the cesspools of Melbourne. Home to some of the scummiest people in Australia, people running around shooting, robbing, knifing and raping eachother is a daily occurrence.

If you live in such an area getting shot, although by no means justified, isn’t all that surprising.

Another reason could be Trkulja’s ethnic allegiance. Trkulja

says he is an organiser and a leader of the community of the former Yugoslavia in Australia and is well-known within that community.


Yugoslavia hey? Anyone who’s been to the Australian Open will testify that the entire Yugoslavian community is a little bonkers. Running around and shooting people, especially those ‘well-known within that community’ again doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

Regardless of what the reason is however one thing is for certain, search engines Yahoo and Google did not author or publish the information linking Trkulja’s links to the Melbourne Underworld.

The website in question, Melbourne Crime: A journey into the Melbourne Underworld, appears to have been taken down by its host BizHosting in early 2008. As far as I can see, apart from Trkulja’s legal action there doesn’t appear to be anything else on the internet linking him to Melbourne’s Underworld.

If we humor Trkulja and hypothesize a win and payout for him, has anyone actually thought of the consequences?

Back in March 2009 there was an estimated 25.21 billion webpages and 109.5 million websites. Search wise, although no official numbers have been released, it’s estimated that Google alone provides results to roughly 2 billion search queries daily.

A win for Trkulja would mean some serious ramifications for search engine providers displaying results in Australia. Obviously nobody has the manpower to filter search results to ensure nobody’s feelings are hurt.

The greater problem though would be the certification that search engine providers are responsible for content published by third parties. Either we as the general public want the broadest information cached for our searching leisure or we don’t.

Even via the smartest AI currently available there’s simply no way to determine whether or not information is possibly defamatory based on local jurisdiction via content analysis alone.

Publishers are already liable and if found guilty of defamation or they voluntarily choose to remove content, procedures are already in place for the removal (either manually or via automation) of content in search results.

Between internet filters and stupid court cases like Trkulja’s, one can’t help but wonder just how much of a laughing stock of the internet Australia is. I think it’s high time a redraft of our laws that apply to the internet was at the very least considered.

The internet is only going to get more technologically advanced and sadly our judiciary are still living in stone ages.



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