Tuesday 15 October 2013

The Section 5 Defamation Act Regulations: A complex red herring – Ashley Hurst

The Section 5 Defamation Act Regulations: A complex red herring – Ashley Hurst | Inforrm's Blog: "I have previously discussed on this blog (here and here) the interrelationship between Section 5 and the other defences available to website operators and the position remains the same. Many website operators will still be able to rely on the defences provided by Section 1 of the Defamation Act 1996 (“Section 1″), Regulation 19 of the E-Commerce Regulations 2002 (“Regulation 19″) and the traditional defences to libel such as truth and honest comment.
Both Section 1 and Regulation 19 impose legal thresholds (as opposed to tick-box checklists) before the website operator loses the defence. There will be cases where a claimant’s notice of complaint has ticked all the boxes for the purpose of Section 5 but does not demonstrate a legal course of action in libel (for example because the serious harm threshold is not met).  Conversely, there will be cases where a website operator is on notice of “unlawful” material for the purposes of Regulation 19 but where the Claimant has not ticked all the boxes for the purposes of Section 5" 'via Blog this'

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