Week 3 - Internet Jurisdiction

The next class is Internet jurisdiction. 
Presentation from class is here.
Please read the following:
The relevant chapter in the assigned class text.

Wikipedia introduction and personal jurisdiction

Sliding Scale Test:

Zippo case

Effects Test:

Calder v. Jones (US Supreme Court)

Application of Effects Test:

Ubid v. GoDaddy

Weather Underground case (and complete court file for this case if interested)

Penguin Group v. American Buddha

Trademark and Calder Test

Australian approach:

Dow Jones v. Gutnick (High Court of Australia)

[Defamation - including Internet cases - background information if interested]

Comment: Determining Internet Jurisdiction

What happens if the Defendant does not show up?

Bell v Steele (No 2) [2012] FCA 62 (7 February 2012) - a case that involves a film made in NY and Australia by Richard Bell from Brisbane, that was uploaded to Vimeo from Australia, and where a person in NY had the film removed from Vimeo.

Could two courts come to an inconsistent result in the same case?
See The Secret litigation:

Background: The Australian

Australian Trial Judge Decision

Full Court of Federal Court Decision

Note regarding US decision on jurisdiction

Twitter Being Sued For Defamation

Twitter is being sued for defamation by a Melbourne man, Joshua Meggitt, who was wrongly identified as the author of a “hate blog”.
See story here and SMH.

Hyperlinking to articles not publication for defamation

An interesting case concerning defamation on the Internet: see the Supreme Court of Canada decision, Crookes v Newton, 2011 SCC 47.

The defendant operated a website offering commentary on various issues. An comment included hyperlinks to two other pages, both of which contained articles that the defendant conceded were defamatory.

One hyperlink was "shallow," in that it referred to a web page on which the defamatory article was one of several articles posted there.

Another was "deep," in that clicking on the link led a viewer directly to the article.

For different reasons, all judges decided that this hyperlinking was not a "publication" for Canadian defamation law.

Throwing the Book at Facebook

See this article in the Business Spectator.

"Companies and individuals are increasingly beginning to query why they should simply wear slanderous online comments that they wouldn't hesitate to take legal action against if it appeared on the printed page. From the heady early days when the internet was seen as a beast too wild to be tamed by the law, there is growing debate as to whether and how the web should be regulated.

In the past few weeks, we have seen a series of legal issues arise in relation to comments on the internet – particularly on Facebook.

In one case, $30,000 in damages was rewarded in response to defamatory comments by a man using various pseudonyms on a stock market forum. We have also seen an Indonesian man currently face jail time for insulting his music mentor on Facebook. ..."

See also - Facebook Ads article

Can Google commit libel?

MediaBistro's Tool Box asks "Can Google commit libel?"

The question is asked following an article in The Times reporting that Google has been asked by Premiership footballer Ashley Cole's solicitors to explain why his name has been linked to the word “gay” in internet search results.

Read more here and here.