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British high court Internet libel ruling

Personal comments posted on TT could be libelous

Toytown Germany > Discussion forum > Themes > Miscellaneous

jeremyB

Mar 22 2006, 6:09 pm

Guardian article: Expert warns of more chatroom libel awards

QUOTE

A landmark legal ruling ordering a woman to pay £10,000 in damages for defamatory comments posted on an internet chatroom site could trigger a rush of similar lawsuits, a leading libel lawyer warned today.

Michael Smith, a Ukip activist who stood for the Portsmouth North seat last year, became the first person to win damages yesterday after being accused of being a "sex offender" and "racist blogger" on a Yahoo! discussion site.

Mr Smith, 53, from Fareham in Hampshire, sued Tracy Williams, of Oldham, for comments posted after she joined a rightwing online forum in 2002.

Topsy

Mar 22 2006, 7:26 pm

This seems like an opportune moment to apologise unreseverdly to anybody who might have been even remotely offended by anything that I have ever said.
I didn't mean it, I was only joking.
And I'm skint, so there's no point sueing me anyway.

bluedave

Mar 22 2006, 7:31 pm

You not skint, you just from Yorkshire and scared of getting near the bar

OhFFS

Mar 22 2006, 8:05 pm

I think you have to have a reputation which is damaged, and you lose out (monetarily?) because of it. I think that excludes most of the reprobates here, so you can carry on slagging each other off. Jimbo probably has more clue than me about it though, because IANAL (and neither is he, as I understand, but he does at least know some, I'm sure).

sun-by

Mar 22 2006, 8:09 pm

QUOTE

"The proliferation of nonsense and untruths, once the preserve of the press, is now a hallmark of a particular kind of cyber discourse. The courts do not seem to have adjusted at all for the fact that a media literate audience should really be able to tell the difference between idle, ill-informed malicious gossip in a tiny rightwing chatroom, and idle ill-informed malicious gossip sent round the world by international media organisations."

In a blog by Miss Emily Bell in response to the Yahoo debacle.

Oh my!

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