Posts on the 2013 Defamation Act, mostly on the process it introduced to protect internet hosts that did not wish to get into complex arguments about truth and other justifications. The idea of passing those to courts doesn’t seem to have gained much traction
The new Defamation Bill promised in the Queen’s Speech has now been published. Although it also contains changes to what statements can give rise to liability for defamation, the most interesting part for network operators is likely to be the new provisions on liability for those who host third party content on web sites and […]
The Ministry of Justice has published their response to the Joint Parliamentary Committee’s comments on a proposed Defamation Bill. As discussed in a previous post, those comments included a novel suggestion that third party postings on websites be treated differently depending on whether the posting is attributed or anonymous. For organisations that allow such postings […]
The report of Parliament’s Joint Committee on the Draft Defamation Bill acknowledges the problems raised in our response to the consultation and proposes some novel solutions. As was noted by the Law Commission in 2002, current defamation law encourages Internet hosts to remove material provided by third parties as soon as they receive a complaint […]
I’ve just submitted a JANET(UK) response to the Ministry of Justice’s consultation on draft Defamation Bill. In fact my comments don’t relate to the current draft Bill, but to a longer-term part of the consultation paper (pp 40-47) on whether any changes are needed to the law of liability for Internet intermediaries. At the moment […]