17 Sep 09 | Uncategorized
The UK’s Ministry of Justice has launched a consultation on defamation on the Internet, with particular focus on the “multiple publication rule”.
What’s multiple publication? Simple, really. Every time someone visits a story on a web site, or a blog post, that counts as publication. If they then refresh the page, that’s two publications, and so on.
With print publications, there is a statute of limitations of one year for libel proceedings. That is to say, if someone published a libellous comment in a newspaper, the person who feels he has been defamed has to respond by issuing legal proceedings. After a year, they can no longer sue. There is a logic to this: if someone genuinely felt they had been damaged, or put at risk of damage, by a news story or comment, it is unlikely they would wait a year before commencing proceedings against a writer, newspaper, magazine or publisher.
With online publication, however, as every time a page is refreshed counts as publiaction, there is no initial point of publication recognised in law. Hence, someone could sue a blogger for something they had written five years ago, but had not been noticed until last week.
This is the issue the consultation seeks to address. You can read the initial consultation paper here
03 Sep 09 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
Billionaire Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, best known in Britain for a series of libel suits and legal threats against reporters and authors who connected his businesses with terror funding, has died of a heart attack at the age of 60.
Read more here
Read Index on Censorship’s report on bin Mahfouz, The True Cost of Libel, here
03 Sep 09 | Index Index, minipost
The grandson of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, is suing Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta for £200,000 over a story about declassified secret documents reportedly signed by Stalin, which ordered the execution of Soviet citizens. His lawyer, Leonid Zhura, said that half a century of lies had been poured over the dictator’s reputation and since he cannot defend himself “from the grave”, it is essential to put the story straight.
Read more here
28 Aug 09 | Uncategorized
Over at Your Right To Know, the estimable Heather Brooke, whose freedom of information work did so much to expose the scandal of MPs expenses, details a bizarre demand from the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
Brooke had testified to the committee on 30 June, and also given a written submission. The submission was subsequently published on Brooke’s site and on the committees.
But earlier this week, she received an email stating:
Dear Ms Brooke
Our lawyers have advised us not publish your submission due to the following reason:
“it contains statements about named individuals which are potentially defamatory.”
We are currently seeking their clarification and requesting suitable redaction.
Once we have this, I will forward them to you for your authority, in writing, to the redaction. We will then be able to publish your submission.
Anju Still
Business Manager
Committee on Standards in Public Life
The evidence had, indeed, disappeared from the committee’s site.
Brooke today received a letter from the committee, suggesting she redact certain parts of the submission published on her site. You can read the submission here, with suggestion redactions in bold).
There seems to be no evidence that anyone actually wants to sue Brooke for any part of her submission. As she put it to Index, we are witnessing a “culture of proactive self-censorship. They are not even waiting for a complaint but predicting possible complaints.”
Furthermore, how can the committee conduct its business, if people cannot report to it without any protection from potential defamation proceedings?
Curiouser and curiouser.
