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Pratap Ravindran

PUNE, Dec. 10

PANIC prevails in cyberspace with the High Court of Victoria, Australia, on Tuesday, allowing a high-profile Melbourne businessman to proceed with a defamation case in Victoria relating to an article published on the Web in the US.

The landmark judgment basically means that information on the Web is deemed to have been published in the place that it is viewed — and not the country of origin, at least as far as defamation goes.

The development, which is being followed with intense interest by leading international media companies such as News Corporation, CNN and The Washington Post, which are concerned about the implications with regard to their Internet publishing activities, revolves around a defamation case filed by the Australian mining magnate, Mr Joseph Gutnick, against the US-based Dow Jones, publishers of Baron's Online, which ran an article containing several references to Mr Joseph Gutnick in October, 2000.

With the Tuesday Victoria High Court ruling, Mr Joseph Gutnick can now launch proceedings in the Victorian Supreme Court against Dow Jones.

The ruling is expected to have a widespread impact as international companies can now be sued in Australia for matter published on the Internet overseas.

Mr Peter Coroneos, Chief Executive of the Australian Internet Industry Association, has been quoted by the media as having held out the warning that publishers would, henceforth, be far more cautious about what they put online.

``What this does is tend to drive (a) publication that is accessible in other jurisdictions to become more conservative for fear of possible legal action against those publishers,'' he said on ABC radio. But Dr Matt Collins, a prominent Melbourne barrister and author of `The Law of Defamation and the Internet,' has taken the position that while the judgment may be perceived as a setback by global media entities, it would not have the negative effect of restricting Internet publishing.

``It will be argued that the decision will have a chilling effect on the availability of material on the Internet in Australia and that it will be difficult for foreign publishers to publish material about foreigners because they are potentially exposed to liability in every country in the world.''

But, he has pointed out, this argument is largely over-stated as many of the problems said to arise because of the Internet were also exposed by earlier technological developments like cable TV and the global availability of news programmes.

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