Intermediary Liability

26 April 2013 at 11:54pm
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.
10 April 2013 at 10:34am
My talk at Networkshop looked at some of the changes going on in the law, especially in the measures that those who operate parts of the Internet are expected or required to take to help deal with unlawful activities on line.
18 January 2013 at 11:33am
[Updated to add clause 6 on peer-reviewed scientific and academic journals] The House of Lords debate of clause 5 of the Defamation Bill this week suggested that the Bill might make it easier for universities and colleges to support vigorous debate through their websites.
12 December 2012 at 10:49am
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has published its conclusions on the Defamation Bill. Among other changes the Bill intends to clarify the position of websites that accept posts from third parties and make it less likely that lawful posts will be removed because of fear of liability.
6 December 2012 at 10:49am
The Law Commission have published an interesting consultation paper on how the law of contempt of court is affected by the internet.
11 October 2012 at 10:16am
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:
14 September 2012 at 7:18am
The Defamation Bill completed its passage through the House of Commons this week with only minor changes to the provisions for third party postings on websites:
13 December 2012 at 9:59am
The House of Commons has published a useful summary of progress on the Defamation Bill, which will return to Parliament next week. Clause 5 of the Bill proposes changes to the current regime for websites hosting allegedly defamatory postings from third parties. When it was last discussed in the House, before the summer, concerns were expressed that the Bill:
29 April 2013 at 11:49am
Tuesday's parallel session on legal and regulatory issues will cover new measures for enforcing the law (including copyright and defamation) on line, as well as an update DNS and regulation. Also watch out for  a plenary talk on the future of network regulation on Wednesday.
29 August 2012 at 5:16pm
I’ve sent in a Janet response to the EU’s consultation “A Clean and Open Internet: Procedures for notifying and acting on illegal content hosted by online intermediaries”.
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