Libel warning to bloggers

Note to bloggers who think that libel doesn't apply to them simply because they have few readers: a landmark case in Britain yesterday found a chat room participant guilty of libel. A man sued a woman for £10,000 (about €14,500) for referring to him as a "racist bigot", "nazi" and "nonce" on a messaging board with only 100 members. Summing up, the judge said that:

"the published statements, upon which reliance is placed, are clearly seriously defamatory. These statements have been made to a restricted audience and it is likely that few people have read these statements. But they were available to the whole world, or at least to the part of the world that has access to a computer and knows how to go on the internet."

A full article on the case is in today's London Times.

Comments

[Damien Mulley]

Digital Rights Ireland has been advising bloggers for a while on this and I think a good deal of them know about libel by now. DRI have a very good document on online libel here:

http://www.digitalrights.ie/2006/01/06/libel-laws-in-ireland/

What is interesting in the case is that Yahoo did not get sued as they hosted the comments.

[Adrian]

Not so sure about that, Damien. Quite a few terms and derogatory remarks appear to be bandied about which, if entered in print or on the air (ie a mass media outlet), would definitely be defamatory. I doubt that most Irish bloggers would be aware of the finer points of that libel document on Digitalrights.ie.

[Cath]

Too right!