Defamation

The passing of the Defamation Act 2013 this week removes a couple of areas of legal uncertainty if you run a website, blog, etc. and someone else posts an article or comment that may be defamatory. First, provided you aren’t acting maliciously, you don’t risk liability merely by moderating what is posted. Second, the Act tries to ensure that defamation claims are settled either between the author and the person allegedly defamed, or by the courts.

The Defamation Bill arrived in the House of Lords this week. Most of the debate concentrated on how to reform the definition of defamation and the court processes for dealing with it. However Lord McNally (at Column 934) gave a good summary of the twin problems affecting websites that host content provided by third parties:

The European Commission have opened a consultation on “notice and action” procedures (in the UK we tend to refer to them as notice and takedown) by those who host content on the Internet. Since Janet customers may see a different side of the issue from us as operators of the network, it would be helpful to get your comments to inform our response. First there are some specific questions from the consultation:

Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights has asked for evidence on the Defamation Bill, so I've sent in a Janet submission pointing out the human rights issues that could be raised by the B