Scenario in UK

Special Issues and Limitations

Many industry insiders and those civil liberties campaigners e.g. Cyber Rights & Cyber Liberties, believe that the combination of the decisions in the above cases will have a profound chilling effect on publishers based outside the UK who allowed published information to enter the territory, and on the Internet communications all over the world.

In my opinion, the results have brought about a warning to the ISPs all over the world that they need to have special caution in relation to material that can be seen or read in the UK. For the sake of protection, ISP with forums or discussion boards should at least incorporate a term to ensure that the ISPs retain discretion to remove inappropriate or unlawful material because the adoption of disclaimers and user policies to prohibit the posting of defamatory materials on the site may not give a site owner or ISP a watertight defense (Canham, 2002). If an ISP receives a complaint in relation to material found to be offending, the matter should be taken care of without delay, and if appropriate, the material should be removed. Needless to say, changes or modifications to existing laws are urgently needed, in particular relating to how ISPs are regulated. More formal guidelines and procedures e.g. for warning ISPs to take defamatory material down so that material cannot be pulled down from a website simply someone objects to it or claims it be offending. To certain extent, it is not fair to the ISPs who are seen stuck in the middle in such events.