Intermediary Liability

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.

6 June 2012 at 11:20am

Defamation Liability for Blogging Platforms

An interesting case, reported by SCL with a good article explaining the issues, has hinted that there might be a third defence to liability for a web host where allegedly defamatory comments are posted. However the case doesn’t provide much detail on when that defence might apply.

6 June 2012 at 11:19am

Government Response on Draft Defamation Bill

The Ministry of Justice has published their response to the Joint Parliamentary Committee’s comments on a proposed Defamation Bill.

6 June 2012 at 11:08am

Defamation Bill Update

The Ministry of Justice has published a summary of the responses to its consultation on a revised Defamation Bill.

4 July 2012 at 4:59pm

Joint Committee Report on Draft Defamation Bill

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.

6 June 2012 at 10:57am

Don't Look, Don't Touch

That seems to be the rather depressing message from the European Court of Justice to websites that allow third parties to post content (e.g. the comments on this blog). Article 14 of the European eCommerce Directive says that those hosts are protected from liability for the content until they are aware of specific infringements of the law. Once aware, they must act expeditiously to deal with the problem.

4 July 2012 at 5:00pm

I've just submitted a JANET(UK) response to the Ministry of Justice's consultation on a 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.

13 August 2012 at 4:55pm

Consultation on European Liability Rules