I've attached an article from the Guardian on this. Hope the formatting is OK.
Bruce
Net firm pays out for
alleged libel
More about privacy on the net
Will Woodward
Friday March 31, 2000
A libel case with profound legal
implications for the internet was settled
yesterday less than a week before it was
due to go to court.
Demon Internet agreed to pay ?15,000
damages and an estimated ?230,000 in
costs to Laurence Godfrey, a physicist
who said he had been defamed by two
anonymous postings on the net. Demon
will have to pay its own costs, a similar
sum.
The case appears to establish in UK law
that internet service providers are subject
to the same libel laws as newspapers and
other media. Some lawyers argued that
the settlement amounted to unacceptable
censorship of the internet, though this
was disputed by others. It could herald a
run of libel actions in Britain, where the
libel laws are much tighter than in the US,
over allegedly defamatory statements on
the net.
The case, which had been due to start in
the high court on Monday, would have
been the first significant libel trial involving
the internet in the UK. But yesterday, in
front of Mr Justice Eady, the company
apologised for failing to remove the
postings when Dr Godfrey protested.
Demon, now owned by Thus plc, later
said it that would press the government for
recognition that ISPs "should not be liable
for the millions of items carried on the
internet every day".
The first posting, described by Gordon
Bishop, Dr Godfrey's counsel, as "squalid,
obscene and defamatory", appeared on
January 12 1997 on the soc.culture.thai
newsgroup, which is carried by Demon. It
was a forgery purporting to be from Dr
Godfrey.
Despite several faxes from Dr Godfrey, the
item remained on the newsgroup until
January 27, and he initiated legal
proceedings.
In July 1998, a second posting, originating
from one of Demon's own customers
under the pseudonym "Iniquity", appeared
in the uk.legal newsgroup and made
further defamatory and personal
allegations about Dr Godfrey, the judge
was told. Dr Godfrey again requested their
removal and again his request was not
complied with.
Dr Godfrey received ?5,000 for the first
libel and ?10,000 for the second, which he
said had a much wider readership in
Britain.
Mr Bishop said Demon had never sought
to suggest there was any truth in either
libel and contended it was not responsible
or liable for either.
Thus plc said it had improved its
procedures for handling complaints about
material posted on the internet.
Mark Stephens, a media lawyer, said: "In
America, ISPs have immunity over the
content they provide access to and that
must be the situation here. Otherwise,
you are going to have a legal free-for-all
with libel writs flying left, right and centre."
Dr Godfrey said the main issue was not
freedom of speech but the power of the
internet to destroy someone's reputation.
"If Demon had taken the simple steps that
I had asked of them at the outset, this
monumental waste of money could be
avoided," he said.
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