One of the pieces of legislation currently completing its passage through the House is the Defamation Bill. The Bill aims to bring the law in this specialist but important area up to date to reflect modern social conditions.
But I fear in one significant area the legislation has missed an opportunity – in considering the special position of website operations. Individuals have had their careers blighted, firms have had their businesses destroyed and hotels and holiday operations have had their activities damaged by malicious postings which turn out to be without any foundation in truth.
The website operations argue that they are like postmen – the latter puts a letter through your door, the website operator puts it on to your laptop. Of course this is a false analogy – the website operator puts it onto, literally, millions of laptops. Redressing the balance and ensuring that the truth can be heard is very difficult.
I do not want to limited freedom of speech or comment, but equally I do not think the website operators can wash their hands of the matter.
I think therefore it is important that website operators should establish, publicise and enforce a Complaints Code – individuals who find unfair or untrue allegations made about them often don’t know what to do and so feel powerless. I was therefore very pleased to speak in support of an amendment which would enable website operators who had set up a complaints code to use this fact in their defence against any defamation claims.
Sadly the Government did not accept the force of this argument and rejected the amendment.
An opportunity has been lost.
I think most website owners would be delighted if their website reached “literally, millions of laptops”.
I am sure the Lords of the Blog would be delighted with that sort of traffic.
I think both analogies about postmen and reach are wrong, and in fact show one of the discrepancies in attitude to publishing.
As a website publisher myself — both blog and work — I find it quite curious how the public and organisations have swiftly changed from demanding an apology for a mistake in a print publication to demanding the removal of content in its entirety on a website.
I am loathe to cite the overused 1984 metaphor, but that is genuinely a level of historical revisionism that would have impressed that fictional society.
I doubt any solution could ever be a good one when trying to balance the right to freedom of speech vs the right to privacy and accuracy in reporting.
However, the growing tendency for websites to be asked to engage in post-mortem editing is a worrying one.
A newspaper when found to have lied is asked to print a correction notice, but the original story lives on unchanged in archives and collections in private homes. They are a vital historical record.
I’d hope that the internet, for all its downsides doesn’t end up as a sanitised historical record by having its warts erased – at least leave the scars visible.
The American government is extremely insecure when it comes to the reality of freedom of speech. This White House in particular cannot bare dissent. So, this is being pused hard by those who want to remain in the closet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNIN0u5_WiQ
And they are, as ususal, spreading their insecurity and alarm here. Its similar to the aelling of Anderson shelters. Friends make a lot of money and the pretence is, we are taking care of the ordinary citizens. the bomb will not affect you if you put MDF board around your dining table.
It’s simply another form of political correctness. We always follow horrendous US leadership even when the evidence is indisputable that the thinking, in just about every policy they have, are thought up by those who want to ‘jump on that there doozlum pin.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LKETk9TW8w
This Lord Hodgson’s post on “fairness, and sustainworthy-lifestyle protection for the disadvantaged, defenceless and assertivenessless”
surely connects with the unfairness posted below by Lord Rennard’s “Rehab Pancake Race” oeuvre;
and probably with many other Peers’ postings, on different Needs and their ensuing or de-facto-derivative topics.
Take for instance the legislated “sufficient minimum income” (£143 per week per individual) for those lacking in multiple-human “money-making” skills,
versus
those trained, and job-placement-advantaged, in multiple-human-income-making skills.
Surely there is a hugely corruptive fault in the Money-Pyramid that dictates who shall be established as most “fit”, “protected”, “private”, “indispensable” and “honoured” ?
and as
“more fully empowered to take both public and private enforcement action against ‘defamers’ and against other noir-opportunists from any such sub-humanitarianly and sub-civilisationally evil brood”
isn’t there ?
Quite so! Hansard published the proceedings online of the SSM bill’s second reading where the minister presenting the bill mentioned in debate Queens Councillors Baroness Kennedy, Lord Lester and Lord Pannick by name. Did she infer they had sight of the bill before it was presented to the Commons? Hansard Column 131
The link below has a diagram of the bills progress through Parliament; it has some way to go before reaching the HoL. The schedule ends with the bill receiving Royal Assent. However, the diagram in this case is not quite accurate – there is a stage at the beginning called ‘Royal Consent’?
The bill in committee will not be scrutinised on the floor of the house but in private? Committee is expected to meet on February 14, 26 and 28 of this year and is expected to report by March 12, 2013.
Ref: SSM Bill Progress
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/marriagesamesexcouplesbill.html
Tom Adams: Royal Consent and Hidden Power
http://ukconstitutionallaw.org/tag/royal-consent-to-bills/
So “Common Law” takes another battering then!
Anne: Its much worse than you think and getting worse?
But first, you mentioned the ‘non obstante’ wording in the Bill of Rights on BD’s Jan 25 blog without giving a reference to the source.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/WillandMarSess2/1/2
The official source above has the full bill in PDF form which says the paragraphs you referred to were repealed?
On topic can someone profess something on the web without providing link(s) to what is being said? If an academic was to publish a paper without referencing material for the purposes of validation they would find their reputation in serious jeopardy. Journalists on the other hand…
What Lord Hodgson is referring to is the meme or memetics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
What he proposed was the equivalent of media eugenics.
Have you considered that the ‘Constitutional Reform Act 2005’ suspended the constitution? Can law be created; is law legitimate in the absence of Judges able to convene a court?
This is what Parliament effectively did in 2005.
They said that as no process is available to bring a matter before a UK constitutional court there is no need of Judges in that court. This is contrary to an established principle that has stood the test of time for 1400 years.
Have the Judiciary been scammed? Are their guarantees of independence not worth the paper they are written on? Is the Monarchy now free of the Bill of Rights; is it in a position to renegotiate its rights?
Do we need a stress test?
Individuals have had their careers blighted, firms have had their businesses destroyed
And how!
It is rather easier to sue a website owner than it is a sound byte radio station or TV channel production company; Sound bytes or images are here and gone in a flash yet do indeed influence millions, or did in the days when everybody watched TV at the same time. The market is now much more fragmented
and website owners are amongst the fragmented pieces.
Lowering somebody’s good reputation is so very easy to perpetrate. The house of Lords has a reputation for praising fulsomely to achieve the same effect…. of damnation.