An Australian court on Monday ordered Google to pay a former Australian politician $ 715,000 ($ 515,000) for two defamatory YouTube videos.
John Barilaro, the former vice president of the state of New South Wales, had sued Google and comedian Jordan Shanks, also known as friendlyjordies, in Federal Court for the videos.
Judge Steven Rares found that Barilaro had been “the object of a relentless, racist, abusive and defamatory campaign conducted on YouTube,” a platform owned by Google.
Barilaro told reporters outside the Sydney court that he felt “vindicated” by the sentence.
“I’m excited today. Listening to his justice read the reasoning and the evidence and the case itself is a bit traumatic,” Barilaro said.
“But I’m glad it’s the end of the journey. You have to be brave or stupid to face Google, and maybe it was a bit of both,” he added.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Associated Press on Monday.
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Barolaro’s lawyer, Paul Svilans, said it was the only known case where Google was sued for defamation through its YouTube operation.
Barilaro would not have sued if Google had removed the videos, uploaded in September and October 2020, as requested by letter in December of that year, he said.
“Once they get our letter and say it’s defamatory, it’s racist, you should withdraw it and they don’t withdraw it, then they’re stuck like any other publisher,” Svilans said.
“They’re a trillion-dollar company that facilitated the publication of horribly racist material about John,” Svilans said.
The videos had been viewed tens of thousands of times and earned Google thousands of dollars, the judge said.
The videos mistakenly accused Barilaro of committing perjury, corruptly giving $ 3.3 million to a beef company, blackmailing councilors and stealing millions of dollars stolen from a board, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Finally, Google dropped all of its defenses against Barilaro’s lawsuit. A four-day hearing in March only focused on how much damage Google would pay. Legal costs will be awarded later.
Sorry and $ 72,000 for the comic
Barilaro’s case against Shanks was resolved in November last year when the comedian and political commentator apologized, agreed to pay $ 100,000 ($ 72,000) and edited the videos.
Shanks ’campaign had been cited as the reason for Barilaro’s decision to retire from politics last year.
Rarely, the judge said, Google has repeatedly failed to take responsibility for its conduct as a publisher.
Google is also fighting in Australia’s highest court over a Victorian court ruling that its search engine had defamed Melbourne underworld lawyer George Defteros.
Defteros successfully sued Google for A $ 40,000 ($ 28,800) in 2020 because the search engine targeted traffic in a 2004 article in The Age newspaper that he had been charged with conspiracy and incitement to murder gangs.
The charges were dropped in 2005.
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