Kiefel CJ Bell J Keane J Nettle J Gordon J 19. 51 Finally, the Court of Appeal referred to page four of Annexure B, which, as mentioned, was the page in respect of which McDonald J drew the conclusion that it was certainly arguable that a reasonable search engine user would look at the compilation of images and assume that Mr Trkulja was a convicted criminal. The Court of Appeal took the entirely opposite view66: "It may be regarded as the high water mark of the material relied upon by the plaintiff, because of the fact that the return of images included the plaintiff and three criminals. Pausing, and underlining the random nature of the images displayed, the four images in the particular sequence are the first four images from the left on the top line of page five of Annexure A … The heading under which the thumbnails on page four appear is 'Images for Melbourne underworld criminals – report images'. It is a similar heading to that which appears above the compilations of images on pages two and three of Annexure B. A reasonable user of the internet, aware of the unpredictable results which are generated by an image search – well exemplified by the 20 pages of Annexure A – would immediately apprehend, in our opinion, that the thumbnails on page four of Annexure B were of no different character. They could not convey the defamatory imputations pleaded by the plaintiff. But there is a further matter. … It is scarcely conceivable that assumed secondary publication prior to [notice being given to Google on or about 3 December 2012] would not attract a successful innocent dissemination defence. But according to the plaintiff's particularised case, it is impossible to say whether page four of Annexure B (and the same is the situation with page five of Annexure A) was published after the giving of notice." 52 Those conclusions are unacceptable. As has been observed, the test of capacity of a published matter to defame is, in this case, whether any of the search results complained of are capable of conveying any of the defamatory imputations alleged. It is not, as the Court of Appeal stated67, whether "any of the defamatory imputations which are pleaded [are] arguably conveyed". To express the test as the Court of Appeal did runs the risk (which appears to have 66 Google Inc v Trkulja (2016) 342 ALR 504 at 599 [401]-[403]. 67 Google Inc v Trkulja (2016) 342 ALR 504 at 597 [389].

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