Comparison between Different Countries

The Issue of Liability

US
Concerning the liability issue of online defamation, the U.S. congress has made a clear-cut definition in the late 1990s. After the case of Stratton Oakmont, Inc. vs. Prodigy Services Company, which reflected the importance of editorial control over content for any ISP and the possibility that the an ISP with well-intentioned monitoring policies might be sued, the U.S. Congress issued the Communication Decency Act (CDA) in 1996. The Section 230 in the CDA had granted the ISP immune in any lawsuits concerning online defamation. The underlying philosophy of Section 230 is to protect those ISPs that have the good faith to self-regulate and the digital freedom of speech. However, in the case of Zeran vs. America Online, Inc., we also see that there were complicated ethical issues involved. While ISPs are immunized from any liability of alleged defamation cases, there are arguable issues such as what if the ISP

UK
In the UK at Common Law, liability for the publication of defamatory material was strict. There was still publication even if the publisher was ignorant of the defamatory material within the document. Once publication was established the publisher was guilty of publishing the libel unless he could establish, and the onus was upon him, that he was an innocent disseminator. As regards the context of Internet, the liability of ISPs for hosting, caching or carrying defamatory material which they did not create depends on two conditions: (1) whether they are "publishers" of that material for the purposes of civil defamation law; and (2) whether they can establish a defence. There are three distinct sources of law for consideration in relation to the main defences available to them: the defence of innocent dissemination at the common law, the defense set out in section 1 of the Defamation Act 1996, and articles 12 to 15 of the Directive on Electronic Commerce.

Unlike the US, ISPs in the UK do not enjoy a broad statutory immunity from liability for defamatory material hosted, cached or carried by them. Because of the substantial differences between the approaches favored in different countries e.g. the UK and the US, the authorities must be treated with extreme caution because of the global nature of Internet.