The law may be slow because it is deliberate: but it gets there. Twitter may have seemed to be a bastion of private speech but a court order to Twitter from a California Court prompted by a UK case shows that it is not. A UK local council made Twitter reveal the details of a Read More
Category: Fair comment
Draft Defamation Bill nearly gets there
The Government’s draft Defamation Bill published today goes a long way to sorting out libel – but not far enough. The good things it proposes are: The claimant shall prove they were substantially damaged or were likely to be substantially damaged by the statement – now the claimant does not have to prove either; There Read More
Is he really a Wiked Witch?
Everyone in the media is closely following the current travails of Julian Assange and the ramifications of the Wikileaks news torrent. Whatever your political leanings, or opinion of the legal issues confronting Mr Assange (and I talk here of the civil suits threatened by the US among others, not the Swedish prosecutor’s charges), it is impossible to ignore the Read More
Pressure on free speech to ease with Eady retirement
The pressure on free speech by the triple whammy of libel, privacy and injunctions should ease. Mr Justice Eady is retiring as the senior judge in the High Court of England and Wales hearing those types of cases. Eady has given a string of decisions which have tightened privacy and opened the way for injunctions to stop Read More
Hug an Appeal Court Judge today
Some days you just want to give those Court of Appeal judges a great big hug. This is one of those days. Those lovely judges have backed up a fair comment defence for a review of an opera in the Evening Standard. The composer, Keith Burstein, took to his lawyers over a review of his Read More