
UK Defamation Act 2013 - SEMW
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/26/contents
======
buro9
Section 5 looks interesting for website operators.

Namely that it's a defence to show that the website operators did not make the
(defamation) statement.

But, the defence is defeated if the complainant (defamed party) cannot
identify the person who did defame, and then notified the website operator who
then failed to respond.

Basically: If you are in the UK and you run a website, you should now change
your policies to ensure that if you have user generated content you can accept
and handle notifications of slander and defamation.

Not doing so may see you end up being liable for the statement.

Which was always the case under the EU E-Commerce Act, but this is now
reinforced by this act.

~~~
shubb
Legal risk to UK based forums etc has always been high.

This article gives a nice (but now outdated) guide to what those risk ara and
how to handle them [1].

It concluded that you were at less risk if you did not moderate, because if
you did, and failed to cull posts that were illegal (hate speech is illegal in
the UK, also yuckier things), you were less likely to get in trouble.

Effectively, this forces a site to moderate, which means they become exposed
if someone posts a nasty and they don't remove it within a reasonable amount
of time.

I was troubled by this when I set up a forum for a largish youth theater. An
organization like that in the UK is very into child protection (criminal
record checks all round), and they worried that they would be responsible if
the kids bullied each other or posted inappropriate photos. We really didn't
want to spend time moderating.

The most surprising things are criminal or at least civil offenses in the UK.
No 1st amendment here.

In practice, we'd probably just run a private forum like that anyway, but if
we were sensible, I guess now we'd not do it.

[1]<http://www.out-law.com/page-7841>

~~~
buro9
> Effectively, this forces a site to moderate

That was not my reading of it.

In fact, were you to moderate it then you would have no defence under the EU
E-Commerce Act.

I do run unmoderated forums in the UK, and have in the past been on the
receiving end of legal action regarding some user generated content.

My reading of this and other laws that work in this area (user generated
content and liability thereof) is that it is best to not moderate at all, to
have no editorial process that intervenes, but to have clear policy and
mechanisms to allow notifications to be received. And ultimately, to record
and act on those notifications.

In terms of moderation, one might argue that it is a form of reactive
moderation. But I would not argue that, as there is no expression of an
editorial policy in handling notifications based on legal merit and only
intervening in site content when notified.

~~~
shubb
Thanks. That is really useful.

Luckily, I've never faced legal action for... anything really, so it's good to
have some insight here from someone who has.

------
cmdkeen
I've updated my bookshelf to include Simon Singh's "Trick or Treatment" which
sparked his involvement in libel reform when he was sued by the Chiropractor's
association.

Given the impact on his life for the past few years he deserves recompense.
Plus his earlier works were excellent.

------
drsim
Recently a customer posted a very bad review of my app on a public app store.
They called me personally a liar, claimed I took weeks to respond to email,
that my service lost their business sales and they paid for a service I didn't
provide.

This review caused my established app of nearly two years, more than 90%
positive reviews and decent revenues to be pulled from the app store for two
days.

I attempted to reach out to the customer to see what I had done wrong, but no
reply on any channel (email/twitter/phone). I just wanted to understand what
had made them so mad and to rectify it or at least stop it happening again.

With my app reinstated in the app store the worst was over, but still that
stain of a very bad review. Thankfully I have great customers who love what I
do and it's now been drowned further down. However my installs were
substantially down and revenue somewhat.

As both the customer & my company are in England I considered legal action
under our libel laws. But after speaking with a lawyer it was clear this would
cost me tens of thousands of pounds and the process was far from
straightforward for this kind of action. It would need to go to the High Court
for judgement.

Now that publicly publishing statements about individuals or businesses to a
wide audience is accessible by anyone for no money we need a more accessible
legal system to stop harmful and untrue statements floating around for
perpetuity on the web.

In my layman's reading this bill seems to edge it forward to cope with the
difficulties of 'publishing' user generated content, but there's nothing for
victims of untrue statements here. We need this moved forward too.

~~~
Houshalter
Getting unfair reviews sucks, but can you imagine the mess if companies could
go after individuals or organizations for giving them bad reviews?

Regardless it shouldn't be law. Let people opt-in or out. For example a review
site might require the reviewers to agree that they can be sued for making
false statements, or vice versa, that the reviews are not guaranteed to be
accurate and reviewers can say whatever they want. I know this is not a
perfect solution, but censorship is easily abused and seems absolutely
unacceptable to me.

People have always said libelous things to each other. But until recently it
was just spoken words to each other. Now that much of our communication is in
text or available publicly, it's so much easier to target individuals or prove
defamation. I suspect that almost everyone is guilty of doing it. The laws
were established for print media where there was an expectation that it was
supposed to be reliable and truthful. Not for private conversations or between
anonymous interneters where that expectation doesn't exist in the first place.

For the most part companies don't abuse the laws because they don't want to
get bad PR, but there are always people that don't care about pr and have an
incentive to abuse it.

~~~
4rgento
To add to the point. IMHO this difamation laws are a patch to problem of
people beliving blindly what they read. In times where the press was the most
popular medium and few voices could be heard these laws had a reason of
existence. In modern times, at least for now, everybody can speak on the
internet and defend himself having the same reach as his attacker.

TL;DR Is someone difamatig you or your bussines? Post reliable evidence on the
internet that shows what is what you actualy do and what other people think
about it.

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mattsfrey
I despise the term "defamation". It's almost always used in the context of
propagating censorship. Libel itself is troubling. Unless you're telling
disparaging and outright lies about somebody in an absolute manner, the legal
system should be nowhere near your freedom of speech.

~~~
jibbist
This defamation act makes a lot of sense. Freedom of speech _is_ and should be
limited, even in the USA. You can't just say anything you please and expect
nothing to come of you. Write a letter with "Chocolate BOMB" to an airport and
see what happens.

This shows the limits on speech freedom in the USA
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_excep...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions#False_statements_of_fact)

In the UK we also enjoy the fact the politicians can't just outright lie in
their Manifesto about other candidates or the current government. If/when they
do, action is taken to correct or (when maliciously undertaken) to disqualify
that person from running for public office.

~~~
idw
It's a bit more limited than that: during election campaigns (which last a few
weeks in the UK) it's illegal for anyone to lie about other candidates'
personal character with the intention of affecting the vote.

e.g. s106 Representation of the People Act 1983 ("False statements as to
candidates.") <http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1983/2/section/106>

Everything else is fair game and "personal character" is narrowly construed —
it's about "the man beneath the politician" as one court put it.

There's also no legal bar to lying about your intentions in your manifesto,
despite a few attempts to persuade the courts to create one.

This from the High Court of England and Wales — "Can a promise of this kind
give rise to an enforceable legitimate expectation? Even if we had accepted
that the relevant ministerial statements had the effect of a promise to hold a
referendum in respect of the Lisbon Treaty, such a promise would not in our
view give rise to a legitimate expectation enforceable in public law, such
that the courts could intervene to prevent the expectation being defeated by a
change of mind concerning the holding of a referendum. The subject-matter,
nature and context of a promise of this kind place it in the realm of
politics, not of the courts, and the question whether the government should be
held to such a promise is a political rather than a legal matter." (Wheeler v
PM, a case about whether the PM was legally obliged by a manifesto commitment
to hold a referendum on an EU treaty [http://www.bailii.org/cgi-
bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/...](http://www.bailii.org/cgi-
bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2008/1409.html))

(IANAL).

------
mseebach
Does this shut down "libel tourism"?

9(c). A court does not have jurisdiction to hear and determine an action to
which this section applies unless the court is satisfied that, of all the
places in which the statement complained of has been published, England and
Wales is clearly the most appropriate place in which to bring an action in
respect of the statement.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
That is the idea. We all hope that it works.

------
pbhjpbhj
So I'm thinking that one could start a "journal of obscene and salacious
comments, potentially defamatory remarks, flames &c." in which we review
statements academically for their values - offensiveness and such. The Journal
will of course be electronic enabling any person to submit for review a remark
of their choosing.

Once submitted Section 6(5) gives anyone the right to "the publication of a
fair and accurate copy of, extract from or summary of the statement or
assessment" and this duplication of the a reviewed submission to our journal
receives privilege.

S.6(6) obviously stands against the actions of the Journal but proving malice
in a statement seems difficult especially when it has been submitted for
academic reasons.

Or maybe not ...

~~~
rlpb
Your journal would only be academic if a judge says it is academic. It doesn't
matter that you call it academic; I doubt any judge would agree. So you would
not have any defence.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _It doesn't matter that you call it academic; I doubt any judge would
> agree._ //

It does rather hinge on the meaning of the term. As I understand it judges can
be lead by caselaw, general definitions in other acts or if not so well
defined the normal common usage meaning. The term "academic" seems unlikely to
be well defined in legislation and the common usage is vague. Similarly I
suspect "journal" has a pretty broad definition. Is the "Journal of Weird-Ass
Shit" an academic journal (<http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~moore/jwas.html>)?

There might be a definition in the tax code somewhere?

A judge is there to apply the law, not to rewrite it if it's not precise
enough to gain a conviction. The judge is there to find how the law _as
written_ determines the legality of an act.

Do you not think vernacular English language usage in conflict and socio-
political impact of uncensored speech is a legitimate area of research?

------
smoyer
What are they? Idiots?

In all seriousness, I'm glad to see that stating the truth is a valid defense.
But we should also remember that just because something is true, we don't have
to state it verbally or commit it to paper or arrange it in electrons. I'd
like to see a return to civility!

~~~
SEMW
> I'm glad to see that stating the truth is a valid defense.

Truth has always been an absolute defence; the Act doesn't change anything in
that regard.

(Several of the 'new' defences are just codifications or tweaks of existing
defences. I think the only completely new defence is the 'peer-reviewed
statement in scientific or academic journals' one).

~~~
mpyne
> Truth has always been an absolute defence

No, not always. In English common law truth was originally only a defense in
civil libel cases. But it was possible to convict persons of _criminal_ libel,
even if the writings were proven true (since it was technically considered as
being a breach of the peace as opposed to mere defamation).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_Act_1843>

------
ZoFreX
To give some context to those of you that haven't been following this issue
over the last few years, The Libel Reform Campaign has a great analysis of
this law here:
[http://www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/Libel/Libel_Refo...](http://www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/Libel/Libel_Reform_Campaign_-
_Initial_asssesment_of_the_Defamation_Act.pdf)

TL;DR: This is a good thing for free speech.

------
Glaucus
Justification can be used to further prejudice and encourage the malicious
gossipmongers which might be discouraged if they were required to have an
honest opinion. Some people are too idiotic though to really have an opinion.
Personal experience. More damage has been caused to me by deliberate
defamation. It takes someone to listen to them though.

------
theorique
What are the rules for religion? My understanding was that the UK had special
protections for criticisms of religion, so that freedom of speech was
particularly constrained around (e.g.) Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins's
criticisms of religious belief or practice.

Is this true or was I misinformed?

~~~
SEMW
You're probably thinking about the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_and_Religious_Hatred_Act...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_and_Religious_Hatred_Act_2006)
, which makes it an offence to incite racial or religious hatred. That's
nothing to do with defamation law; they don't interact.

~~~
theorique
Ah, thanks.

