[kictanet] Google loses round one of court battle with Waiguru

[Mwendwa Kivuva]

This is an interesting development.

The law has been silent in terms of Intermediary Liabilities. It would be
good to have precedence in terms of case law on the same since we have
refused to propose bills on the same. The only challenge is those advising
the judge, and the media too are not very informed in the area of Internet
intermediaries and we might end up with bad precedence. This is also the
Observation of Kictanet (Victor, Grace and Alice), and CIPIT in the
Stanford map on Intermediary liability in Kenya (1)

We should not expect web hosting companies to police content of their
customers, but this has become the norm everywhere. Companies like
Rapidshare shrunk to nothing because of requirement to police client's
content. (2). Others like megauploads died out.
In other jurisdictions, search engines too suffer law suites yet they just
make the information available and are not the publishers.

Why does this happen? Intermediaries are easier to identify: and therefore,
they become the only ones to sue in cases where the alleged culprit remains
anonymous, and they have the technical ability to ensure the compliance to
court rulings, and they have deep pockets in case the litigant wins the
case and there is libel damages are to be paid.

There is precedence elsewhere in the world, an interesting one was decided
by the Supreme court of Argentina (3) where a lady had sued Google and
Yahoo for linking search results to third-party content that violated her
fundamental rights and infringed copyright. The decision was largely
favourable to search engines.

Lets wait and see.

Notes
(1) http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/page/wilmap-kenya
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RapidShare
(3) http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/case-watch-top-argentine
-court-blazes-trail-online-free-expression

______________________
Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya
T: twitter.com/lordmwesh

"There are some men who lift the age they inhabit, till all men walk on
higher ground in that lifetime." - Maxwell Anderson

On 11 December 2014 at 07:58, Mark Kipyegon via kictanet <
kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

> From the news article, the offending site is hosted on the blogspot[.]com
> platform which is a product of Google.
>
> Google has policies in place regarding disclosure of personal information
> to authorities. You can easily check them out online.
>
> On 11 Dec 2014, at 07:49, "Victor Kapiyo via kictanet" <
> kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
>
> I don't think they are the right party in the suit. Unless they host those
> sites.
> On Dec 10, 2014 8:24 PM, "Ngigi Waithaka via kictanet" <
> kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
>
>> Exactly how does Google come into this?
>>
>> Waithaka Ngigi
>>
>> Alliance Technologies
>> Nairobi, Kenya
>>
>> www.A1.io
>> On 10 Dec 2014 12:56, "Grace Githaiga via kictanet" <
>> kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
>>
>>> The Constitutional and Human Rights Division of the High Court, sitting
>>> in Nairobi, declined to grant Google Kenya's prayers to be struck out of
>>> the case in which Ms Waiguru has sued Google Kenya and its mother company
>>> Google Incorporated.
>>>
>>> Google Kenya had made the application in response to a suit the Cabinet
>>> Secretary had filed against it and Google Inc. as part of her fight with a
>>> Kenyan website Daily Post over publication of a story she claims was
>>> defamatory.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Google-loses-first-round-battle-against-Waiguru/-/539546/2550536/-/item/0/-/y9ryi1z/-/index.html
>>>
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> for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and
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> sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
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