] Why is Google immune from liability?
]
] The most direct reason is that a federal law that those
] who host, rather than author, speech on the Internet
] cannot be treated, for legal purposes, as having
] published it. As a result, they cannot be sued for
] defamation -- or for any other tort that has publication
] as one of its essential elements.
]
] The law protects message board owners, chat room hosts,
] bloggers who give others access to their blogs, and
] indeed, virtually anyone who allows material on their
] site, or provides access to material, that they do not
] themselves author. That includes Google and other search
] sites.
]
] By contrast, the defamation liability risk of selection
] sites such as The Drudge Report -- that is, sites that
] offer collections of specially culled links to other
] sites -- remains uncertain. Someone who chooses a link
] may count as having published the material to which the
] link leads -- and may be held to have the state of mind
] to be held liable for the choice. This argument has been
] used in the context of the Digital Millennium Copyright
] Act, and could be used in the defamation context, as
] well.

I checked and couldn't find any court presidence on what constitutes "publishing" content on the Internet and "linking" content on the Internet. Anyone know of any?

What are the legal ramifications of meme-ing a site that contents something defamatory? This has interesting consequences for the blogging community: seeing how stories and commentaries are spread by the Internet equivilent of word of mouth, linking, a single defamatory story would act as a virus, exposes all who link it to possible legal action.

Why you can't sue Google