IMPLICATIONS
The Defamation Act 1996 had initially been regarded as providing legal protection to non-authors of electronic communications. Given the literal wording of the Act and the Court's approach in G Go od df fr re ey y, however, such optimism was clearly misplaced: many commentators predict that major organizations, especially electronic publishers and newspapers will need to invest in something like 24 hour a day 'libel reviews'. By contrast, the US cases indicate a greater readiness to adapt common law principles to ensure that a 'publisher' of a statement is conditional upon significant editorial control over it. Moreover, legislation such as the Communications Decency Act 1995 has gone where UK legislation has so far feared to tread in protecting providers who take good faith steps to restrict access or availability of defamatory material. Given the strategic importance of the Internet and E-commerce, it will surely only be a question of time before the Defamation Act 1996 is substantially amended or UK defamation case law refined so that organizations are not regarded as 'publishers' of material where they have no direct editorial control over it.
J Jo oh hn n W Wa ar rc ch hu us s, , R Re ep po or rt t C Co or rr re es sp po on nd de en nt t John Warchus is the IT and E-commerce Partner at Shadbolt & Co.