Google and Facebook will face penalties of at least $10 million for breaches of a media bargaining code drafted by the ACCC that aims to create a “level playing field” between Australian media companies and the tech giants.
Google has reached agreements with publishers in three countries to pay for news, as the ACCC works out the details of a mandatory code under which the search giant and Facebook would be forced to pay publishers for news.
A group of IP lawyers has warned the Government will have to proceed carefully in establishing a mandatory code under which Google and Facebook would be forced to pay news publishers for content, saying such a move could be struck down under existing High Court precedent.
Google has been ordered to hand over details of an online reviewer’s identity to gangland lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson so she can pursue a potential defamation and misleading and deceptive conduct case against the reviewer, which she alleges is a rival law firm.
Google has been ordered to pay Melbourne gangland lawyer George Defteros $40,000 after it was found to have defamed him by publishing a link to an article that implied he had “crossed the already blurred line” between being a criminal solicitor and being a confidant to his underworld clients.
Allowing Google’s planned $3 billion acquisition of fitness device company Fitbit to go through would give the search giant “unprecedented” access to sensitive personal data and would substantially lessen competition in several markets, a privacy rights group has told the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
Digital giants Google and Facebook will be required to pay for news content under a new mandatory code being developed by the Government to create a ‘level playing field’ in the Australian media industry, which is facing a sharp decline in advertising revenue driven by the coronavirus.
A judge has refused to summarily dismiss a defamation case brought by a government worker against Twitter, Google and Yahoo over racist, homophobic, anti-Muslim and conspiratorial tweets resulting from an alleged identity theft.
Google has been hit with a third preliminary discovery lawsuit seeking the identity of online reviewers, this time by a Melbourne brothel and escort service seeking to eliminate 11 one-star reviews from the search engine.
Search giant Google may face a class action by disgruntled business owners seeking compensation for loss and damage they claim has been caused by anonymous negative online reviews.