UK High Court Recognizes That Defamation Standard Should Be Lowered For Online Forums

from the a-step-in-the-right-direction dept

UK libel law is incredibly strict. It's much stricter than in the US, which is why there have been a few cases over the years where someone tried to sue for libel in the UK despite the fact that the content had nothing to do with the UK. However, there's a small bit of good news coming out of the UK, where the High Court has ruled that online chat rooms and message boards should be treated more like spoken conversations (slander) than written ones (libel). This is a basic (but important) recognition that these parts of the internet are about communication rather than broadcast content (which is what libel laws target), noting that content posted to a message board is quite different than content in a newspaper:

"[Bulletin board posts] are rather like contributions to a casual conversation (the analogy sometimes being drawn with people chatting in a bar) which people simply note before moving on; they are often uninhibited, casual and ill thought out. Those who participate know this and expect a certain amount of repartee or 'give and take'."

"When considered in the context of defamation law, therefore, communications of this kind are much more akin to slanders (this cause of action being nowadays relatively rare) than to the usual, more permanent kind of communications found in libel actions. People do not often take a 'thread' and go through it as a whole like a newspaper article. They tend to read the remarks, make their own contributions if they feel inclined, and think no more about it."

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City Council Forces Forum Offline; Claims Debate Should Take Place At Meetings Only

from the civilized-people-don't-do-online-forums dept

Eric Samson writes "The city council of the small town of Rawdon, Quebec (population: 9400) has managed to get a court order to shut down an online forum (French only) because its users were posting messages that were considered 'defamatory and detrimental to the reputation' of the elected board. Police raided the forum owner's house, copied his entire hard drive and asked him to delete the offending posts, and when he said he had over 8,000 messages to look through, they did not specify which ones were specifically targeted.

So he simply shut down the site.

Five other users, posting under their real name, were visited by police as well. The city's lawyer declared: "What we can't do in newspapers, on the radio, or on TV, we can't do on the Internet. This is the message we're trying to get across." The mayor had this to say: "Debate should be civilized and take place during Council meetings.""

Democracy may be messy, but it seems rather pointless to completely shut off an avenue for discussion just because some parties are a little rude. If any individual was being defamatory, charge them with defamation -- don't shut down the whole thing. And, to then claim that debate should only take place at council meetings shows a council that isn't just out of touch with technology, but with democracy as well.

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