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CANBERRA, December 12, 2002 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Australia’s highest court has ruled that a man living in Victoria state can launch a libel suit in Australia against a U.S.-based website over damage to his reputation in the local community. The High Court dismissed an application by Dow Jones & Co. to have the defamation suit moved to a court in the U.S. on grounds the libels appeared in its subscription-only Barron’s Online website.  The ruling is said to have “far-reaching implications for U.S.-based Internet publishers, who may in future find themselves facing libel suits in countries where freedom of speech is not as vigorously upheld as in the U.S.,” writes CNSNews.com, suggesting the online news service supports Dow Jones’ case.  Media professor Andrew Kenyon of Melbourne University Law School says this marks the first case in which a country’s top court has ruled on the question of where Internet publishing takes place for defamation purposes.  For full CNSNews coverage see:  https://www.cnsnews.com/ForeignBureaus/archive/200212/FOR20021210b.html