Scenario in UK

Laws and Regulations

In the UK, the governing statute is the Defamation Act 1996. The 1996 Defamation Act imposes penalties on the publication of defamatory remarks regardless of its form: libel or slander. Plaintiffs who bring successful actions under the Act are entitled to substantial damages. In order for materials to be considered libelous, the statements must be published and have the effect of lowering the esteem of the plaintiff in the eyes of right-thinking members of society.

Section 1 of the Act establishes a defence, in many cases to Internet intermediaries e.g. ISPs, in respect of material hosted, cached or carried by them, but which they did not create. The section 1 defence is, in effect, a statutory version of the defence of innocent dissemination, modified for modern conditions. It sets out a three-limb test, all of which must be met for a person to establish a defense in defamatory proceedings:

(1) (a) he was not the author, editor or publisher of the statement complained of;
(b) he took reasonable care in relation to its publication; and
(c) he did not know, and had no reason to believe, that what he did caused or contibuted to the publication of a defamatory statement.

As outlined in the Act, "author" means the originator of the statement, but does not include a person who did not intend that his statement be published at all; "editor" means a person having editorial or equivalent responsibility for the content of the statement or the decision to publish it; and "publisher" means a commercial publisher, that is, a person whose business is issuing material to the public, or a section of the public, who issues material containing the statement in the course of that business. In relation to Internet publication, a person shall not be considered the author, editor or publisher of a statement if he is only involved in processing, making copies of, distributing or selling any electronic medium in or on which the statement is recorded, or in operating or providing any equipment, system or service by means of which the statement is retrieved, copied, distributed or made available in electronic form, under section 1(3)(c); or as the operator of or provider of access to a communications system by means of which the statement is transmitted, or made available, by a person over whom he has no effective control, under section 1(3)(e).