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UK Libel Law Is a Global Threat To Web Free Speech

Posted by Soulskill on from the careful-what-you-tweet dept.

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."

4 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. implications by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sooooo, what does this mean to a citizen of another country (say the United States) who has no assets in GB? Are they able to reach out and touch you?

  2. Why should I care about foreign court orders? by qbzzt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not a British citizen. I have no assets in the UK anybody could seize.

    Why should I care if you sue me in a UK court? You could get a court order entitling you to a million pound. How would you collect? Ask me to send you a cheque from the US?

    --
    -- Support a free market in the field of government
    1. Re:Why should I care about foreign court orders? by sudotron · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, I must say that the UK is a horrible place to live and I absolutely would not recommend anyone to travel there. Ever. Wherever you go, make sure it isn't the UK.

      Come and get me, bitches.

  3. Missed the elephant in the living room by identity0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I only did a quick scan of the article, but it sounds like the author is blaming only some recent developments in UK law, but not the underlying system of UK law.

    The basic thing that's wrong with UK libel law is that the burden of proof is on the defendant. The defendant must prove that the published article isn't libelous, whereas in the US the prosecution must prove that the article is libelous. In the UK the defamatory article is assumed to be wrong unless the defendant proves it true, whereas in the US the article is assumed to be true unless the prosecution proves it false. And then the US prosecutor would have to prove that it was maliciously false, that the defendant knew it to be false. Welcome to Soviet Britain, where defendant is guilty until proven innocent!

    UK law in libel was designed to protect the powerful against 'false' accusations in the press, where US law was designed to protect the press in publishing accusations. See John Peter Zenger