Australian Supreme Court Says It Has Jurisdiction Over A New Jersey Server

from the jurisdiction-rears-its-ugly-head...-again dept

Mon, Dec 9th 2002 11:49pm — Mike Masnick

It seems the issue of legal jurisdiction and the internet is appearing once again. A defamation suit against Dow Jones is going to proceed in Australia, despite the story being published on a website in New Jersey. Dow Jones has argued that the case should be tried in the US, seeing as how they published the article in the US. However, the Australian Supreme Court says that since the artice was available on the web in Australia, it's as if they had published it in Australia as well. This question of internet jurisdiction keeps coming up, and I'd say this is a terrible ruling. It means that, technically, anyone who publishes anything on the internet could face charges anywhere in the world. If people followed that, it would be nearly impossible to publish anything online.

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4 Comments

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MeV, 10 Dec 2002 @ 10:04am

Hey, the US is doing it to Russia...
What about the DCMA trail going on over a Russian company selling software and the US Justice department jailing a Russian cryptographer when he came over for a conference?
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Mike (profile), 10 Dec 2002 @ 10:30am

Re: Hey, the US is doing it to Russia...
Indeed. I didn't mean to imply that the US was any better at this. I was just pointing out that the question is going to keep coming up, until some sort of agreement is reached.

It seems that all countries seem to want to believe that the laws of their own country apply to the internet as a whole. That's a recipe for disaster (or a reason to head back to law school).
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whosawhat?, 6 Dec 2005 @ 6:15am

silly...
This is just plain silly. Why doesn't the guy just avoid going south then? Just stay away and let them be as pissed as they wish.
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TechNoFear (profile), 6 Dec 2005 @ 7:29pm

This is a defamation case
Sorry about the late reply but this article is linked to a current one...

This was a defamation case, as such the claimant must prove his reputation was damaged (and that the damage has cost them).

The news item was viewable in Australia and Australia is where the claimant has a reputation to be damaged (not in the US).

So if you are going to publish on-line content about Australians' then you should ensure that it is factual and legal (in Australia).
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