Britain’s newspaper editors were summoned en masse yesterday to No 10 Downing Street, where Prime Minister David Cameron adopted a head masterly approach and demanded they do better following the castigating report from Lord Justice Leveson into press behaviour and ethics.
With the acres of coverage in their very own newspapers on the Leveson fall out – will arguments over statutory underpinning of a reformed regulatory structure split the coalition government and create a rift within the PM’s own Conservative party? – one would be forgiven for thinking that issues arising from the report are of such monumental importance that the world should stop turning on its axis until they are resolved. But while questions of free speech and freedom of the press are core to this debate and indeed crucial to open democracy itself, there is an English court action currently on foot that is equally if not ultimately even more profoundly important to the future of media.

Behemoth

A former Conservative party local government candidate is appealing a High Court ruling from last spring that California-based internet search engine behemoth Google cannot -- for purposes of defamation law -- be considered as a publisher and therefore be responsible for defamatory statements made on sites found in its search returns.
The background is this: Payam Tamiz stood for a local council seat in a town in Kent, a county charmingly referred to as ‘the garden of England’. However, what happened next, says Mr Tamiz, was no bucolic idyll. According to a report at the time in the Daily Mail newspaper, he was attacked in an on-line blog as being a drug dealer and for having stolen from a previous employer – allegations that had no basis in fact.
Mr Tamiz sued the search engine giant, as the blogs had appeared on Google’s Blogger.com platform. Indeed, the judge hearing the case at first instance, the renowned gnomic defamation specialist, Mr Justice Eady, said, according to The Daily Telegraph newspaper, that it was not surprising that Mr Tamiz had gone down that route.

No control

However, the judge -- who historically has caused editors of conventional tabloid newspapers to froth at the mouth over his perceived claimant-friendly approach – went on to accept Google’s argument that ‘it has no control over any of this content’ as it was a ‘neutral service provider’. In other words, Google’s position was tantamount to that of any owner of a village wall on which hooligans had spray-painted malicious aspersions about the chastity of local teenage girls. Or indeed, to that of a newsagent who stocked a range of publications, anyone of which could be chockablock with false and defamatory statements.
His ruling will have caused sighs of relief in Google’s Silicon Valley new town headquarters, Googleplex. But the appeal could wipe the smile from the faces of the chino-clad executives. As the Telegraph reported a few days ago, Mr Tamiz’s lawyers are arguing that Google’s role well exceeds the functions of just hosting or storing information.

Powerful myth

The newspaper quotes his lawyer as telling the appeal court judges that ‘little that happens on the internet is genuinely automatic or passive ... the notion that the internet runs automatically or passively is in essence a powerful myth, which has been fostered very successfully and profitably by internet superpowers such as Google ...’
If the appeal court judges agree, the shock waves will be felt across cyberspace, which until now has been seen as a Wild West frontier where applying standard concepts of libel and privacy law are fraught with difficulty. Of course, if the search engine superpower takes a hit in the appeal court, it would be hugely surprising if its legal team didn’t seek immediate leave to shoot off to England’s Supreme Court for another round, so a final result is likely to be some time off yet.
Nonetheless, the sheriff may soon be riding into cyberspace.