Rindos v. Hardwick was a case of Internet defamation heard in 1994 in which Western Australian lawyers representing a visiting American academic sought to create a legal precedent by deeming an email sent by Gil Hardwick to have alleged paedophilia against David Rindos, a probationary lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Western Australia.
Hardwick was living at the time with his wife and young family in Derby as part of a field trip into the Great Sandy Desert in the far north-west of Western Australia.
Hardwick's email seeking to clarify the situation in the midst of global hysteria among homosexual academics and their supporters being incited by the case was posted to the Usenet newsgroup sci.anthropology in response to prolonged haranguing of the group by Rindos and his supporters.
The background controversy was apparently concerned with preferential homosexual and lesbian engagement between staff and selected students; and more generally over the disruption to their studies caused by radical changes wrought by the then Hawke Federal Labor Government.
The case in law focused on a Usenet posting made via DIALix, arguably Australia's first commercial Internet service provider, although the court did not consider whether the ISP was responsible for carriage of the message.