Posts about what Internet intermediaries can and can’t do; and how the law rarely gets that right…
The Defamation Bill had its second reading in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Most of the MPs who talked about the new defences for website operators (clause 5 of the Bill) seemed to appreciate the complex balance between protecting reputation and protecting free speech, and agreed with the Justice Secretary: our current libel regime […]
Under current defamation law, if a website wants to avoid all risk of liability for material posted by third parties then its best approach is to not moderate postings when they are made, and remove them promptly when any complaint is made. As I’ve pointed out in various responses to consultations (and as now seems […]
Two consultations have come along at once – one from Westminster and one from Brussels – that both seem to recognise the problems with incentives that current liability rules create for sites that host third party content. Under both the UK Defamation Act 1996 and the European eCommerce Directive (2000/31/EC) hosts are discouraged from themselves […]
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 latest judgment from the BT/Newzbin case sets out what BT will be required to do to prevent its users accessing the Newzbin2 website that an earlier case found to be breaching copyright. From next month, BT will be required to add the Newzbin URLs to the system it already uses to limit access to […]
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 […]
Last year’s Digital Economy Act 2010 created a power (s.17) for a court to order a service provider to prevent access to a “location on the Internet” if that location was being used, or likely to be used, to infringe copyright. That power has not been brought into force and last January Ofcom were asked […]
Two recent news stories suggest that the importance of open Internet connectivity is gaining increasing international recognition. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression has published a report stressing the importance both of making internet infrastructure available to as much of the world’s population […]
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 […]