Nightmare on Holy Street, Part 2: His Holiness goes to the Court of Appeal. Hardeep Singh reports
(more…)
Siobhain Butterworth over at the Guardian law blog draws asks if a recent ruling by Mr Justice Tugendhat in the case of IslamExpo versus the Spectator magazine will have an impact on the web’s culture of linking.
A question that remains to be resolved is whether a link to a web page that contains defamatory statements about someone is actionable. The high court’s decision in the recent Spectator case looks at the hyperlinking question from another angle. Can the web pages a publisher links to inform the meaning of an article?
Tugendhat ruled that in this case, linked articles (from Stephen Pollard’s post to Harry’s Place, among others) must be assumed to be part of the overall context of the piece.
This would seem to make sense. Links are inserted exactly to provide context and reference points.
But there is a question over whether the insertion of a link makes one liable. If I link to material, is it a specific endorsement. Or indeed, am I implicating the linked website in my own libellous allegation.
We’re still not sure. Tugendhat’s ruling on overall context is relevant in this specific case, but he is keen to point out “I do this without thereby intending to imply any ruling, one way or the other, as to whether that approach is right in law.”
So it would seem we’re really none the wiser.
The gloves are off as Ricky Hatton’s solicitor Gary Williams is attempting to put boxing promoter Frank Warren down for the count by suing him for libel. The two are set to square off after an objection was raised to an article written by Warren in the Sun, entitled “Fatty Ricky should give it up”, which according to Williams, claims that he persuaded Hatton to take a fight that could result in permanent injury because of his unhealthy lifestyle.
Hatton is renowned for being a heavyweight both in and out of the ring, unable to resist guzzling on take-aways, pies and hefty portions of Guinness between fights. However, unlike his glass jawed solicitor, he has shown a greater willingness to roll with the punches and, as his fat suit entrance stunt shows, can see the funny side of his rather portly physique.
In his writ to the High Court, Williams claims that the piece seriously injured his “personal and professional reputation” and caused “acute distress and embarrassment”. Thus Warren finds himself in the opposite corner for this bout, having previously won £115,000 damages for defamatory allegations made against him in Hatton’s autobiography.
Conor Foley at Comment is Free has a different take from Jonathan Heawood on the Bookseller of Kabul defamation case.
Conor says:
The biggest conceptual weakness of Seierstad’s book is that she does not seem to have understood the absolute centrality of the concepts of “hospitality” and “namos” (literally the “status, chastity, purity, virtuousness, and nobleness of the female members of the family”) to Afghan society. The idea that you could accept someone’s hospitality and then spy on them to violate their namos is completely shocking and makes a mockery of all her other claims of insight into the society in which she was living.
But is it necessarily a writer’s duty to cover all the complexities of every story?
Some may argue that freedom of artistic expression should be completely divorced from such political considerations. However, a writer who chooses to use a conflict as the background for their work cannot plead cultural immunity when real life intrudes on the result.
Plus: you can hear Asne Seierstad and Shah Muhammad Rais disuss the case on the Today Programme here