An Australian federal court on Monday ordered Google to pay more than 715,000 Australian dollars (about C $ 650,000) to a politician who was defamed in videos of a comedian posted on YouTube.
In 2020, John Barilaro was Deputy Premier of New South Wales when he was targeted by an Australian comedian, with the pseudonym friendlyjordies. In his videos, the latter accused Mr. Barilaro of corruption while imitating his Italian accent.
In court, the former senior politician collapsed while watching one of these videos, which the comedian shot in a luxurious house owned by Mr. Barilaro and rented to AirBnB.
I was traumatized by all of thissaid Mr. Barilaro while delivering his testimony before the court.
By the end of 2021, he was reconciled with friendlyjordies, whose real name is Jordan Shanks. So the comedian apologized and agreed to edit the videos, which have been viewed more than a million times on YouTube.
Google’s responsibility
For his part, Judge Steven Rares found that Google, the owner of YouTube, would be responsible for the damage caused to Mr. Barilaro since December 2020, when the politician’s legal team wrote to the American giant to ask him to remove the offensive videos. The magistrate ordered Google to pay damages.
According to him, these videos caused Mr. Barilaro’s early departure from public office, when he resigned from parliament in October 2020, and he was traumatized and traumatized severely.
Judge Jordan Shanks also found out YouTube needs to spread its poison and Google is ready to join the comedian to earn revenue as part of its business model.
France Media Agency
Source: Radio-Canada
