If you publish hyper-local news and allow public comment, or even if you allow comment on your blog, there was a significant ruling in the English courts this week.

Regional publisher Newsquest was being sued by a disbarred lawyer for comments that had been left on one of their Web sites by a member of the public.

Previously, the way the law stood, it wasn’t completely certain if the person running a Web site – in the eyes of the law, the ‘Publisher’ – would be responsible for comments made by readers of the site.

The High Court ruling judged that Newsquest weren’t, in this case, liable for words published to their site that they didn’t write.

Specifics
The specific detail that holdthefrontpage reports is that Mr Justice Eady concluded that the “websites were acting as hosts of the reader comments for the purposes of Regulation 19 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 and therefore would not be liable for any damages even if the material was unlawful.”

Key points
That will be the case only if these key points are followed by Website owners –

• the comments were by a third-party (ie not them, but readers)
• there was no editorial intervention before the comments appeared on the site (they hadn’t been held in a moderation queue first);
• once Newsquest had received the legal notice of complaint they acted swiftly and removed the comment from public view until the position was clear.

This will be a big relief for those who run Web sites with comments.

Background
As we’re sure you know, English law is based on case law, meaning that each legal ruling that comes along can affect the way that similar cases that come after it are judged.

The foundation case for dealing with libelous comments on the Internet was Godfrey v Demon Internet Service way back at the start of the new millennium, so this case now firms up what was previously hoped – that the publisher, isn’t liable for comments left on their site, if they follow the rules.

Newsquest’s head of legal, Simon Westrop told holdthefrontpage that the ruling “should help Website operators in similar circumstances to understand their responsibilities as regards the hosting of user-generated content, with the assurance that the law offers protection if they act correctly.”

image: ell brown under CC BY-SA 2.0

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