Text Of Australian Defamation Decision Online

TekPolitik writes: "The text of the Australian defamation decision is now online. As given, it only affects services that limit access to subscribers who can be identified as being in Australia (such as by credit card billing country) - Slashdot is safe for the time being. This decision will almost certainly be appealed to the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Victoria, and probably all the way to the High Court. There is unlikely to be a final outcome on this for a year."

Comments

Re:While not as worrisome...

[daoine]

this at least allows any publisher in such a situtation to take steps to block access to material if necessary

Actually, I think this is the meat of the problem. By forcing the publisher to be responsible for content generation based on the location of the subscriber, we open up the whole can of worms. Suddenly, publishers are responsible for knowing ALL the limitations of every country that has a modem somewhere in it. I think this is the case people don't want -- IANAL in America, and I shouldn't have to be one in Australia either to prevent myself from getting sued under some law in another country.

It's placing the responsibility on the wrong people. A country is responsible for enforcing its own laws. It can not expect the rest of the world to abide by the laws it has set for it's own society.