[LINK] UK Libel law capital of the world

Jan Whitaker jwhit at janwhitaker.com
Mon Mar 30 19:36:53 AEDT 2009


uctpjac writes "London media lawyer Emily MacManus argues that UK 
libel law has three features which make it the 'defamation tourism' 
capital of the world and a serious threat to Web free speech. First, 
there is no free speech presumption in the UK as there is, for 
example, in the US. Second, every access of a Web page is considered 
to be a separate act of publication in the UK (unlike the US, where 
'original publication' holds). Third, 'no-win-no-fee' libel 
litigation is now allowed in the UK. If any blog, anywhere, publishes 
something you'd like taken down, threaten libel action in the UK: no 
one except the super-rich can afford to even take these cases to 
court, so media lawyers advise publishers to 'take it down, take it 
down quickly, take it down again.' There's not much chance that the 
judges will move the law any time soon because they just aren't 
seeing the cases that could cause them to set new precedent."

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/29/1411207&from=rss


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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