Sydney’s Telegraph newspaper has lost out in court, to the tune of $480,000, to a group of people who wrote references for a guy being prosecuted for possessing child porn. They were a high-powered lot, including a former Supreme Court judge, but the fact that the comments left by readers on the story were taken as a significant part of the libel should send a collective shiver across the internet.
I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding is that as soon as a single person opens your web page in Australia you are “publishing” there, and could get sued there.
About