Media Outlets Responsible For Facebook Comments On Their Posts, Australia Court Rules

<p dir="ltr"><strong>New Delhi:</strong> An Australian court has ruled that the country&rsquo;s news publishers are responsible for the comments their readers write in response to content posted on their corporate Facebook pages.&nbsp;</p> <p dir="ltr">Hearing the matter on Wednesday, Reuters reported, the High Court dismissed an appeal against a previous ruling that had found merit in a defamation suit filed by one Dylan Voller, a youth detainee whose case of mistreatment at a youth detention center had caught massive media attention.</p> <p dir="ltr">Voller had filed a suit against several publishers, including Fairfax Media, which published the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper owned by broadcaster Nine.</p> <p dir="ltr">In his appeal, he had said a number of third-party Facebook users made defamatory comments after stories referring to him were posted on the news publications&rsquo; Facebook pages. He argued that the news outlets as publishers were liable for action.</p> <p dir="ltr">After a court admitted the suit, the media outlets lodged an appeal arguing that they only administered a Facebook page on which third parties publish their own content.</p> <p dir="ltr">The High Court, however, dismissed the appeal and ordered the publishers to pay costs.</p> <p dir="ltr">"The acts of the (media companies) in facilitating, encouraging and thereby assisting the posting of comments by the third-party Facebook users rendered them, publishers of those comments," the court said in the ruling.</p> <p dir="ltr">"This is a common-sense decision that accords with longstanding law on the issue of the publication," Reuters quoted O&rsquo;Brien Criminal and Civil Solicitors, Voller&rsquo;s counsel, as having said after the ruling.</p> <p dir="ltr">The New South Wales Supreme Court will now determine if the comments indeed defamed Voller.</p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>&lsquo;Will Have Ramifications&rsquo;</strong></p> <p dir="ltr">Facebook, which now allows page moderators to turn off comments on posts, did not do that at the time the comments in question were published.</p> <p dir="ltr">Publishers have expressed disappointment over the court&rsquo;s decision.</p> <p dir="ltr">"...it will have ramifications for what we can post on social media in the future," a spokesperson for Nine was quoted as saying in the Reuters report.</p> <p dir="ltr">Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, Michael Miller, executive chairman of News Corp Australia, said the court ruling was significant for everyone maintaining a public page on social media platforms.</p> <p dir="ltr">"They can be liable for comments posted by others on that page even when they are unaware of those comments."</p>