Elon Musk’s US lawyers used some interesting arguments to defend their client from the accusation of libel. Musk used the term “pedo guy” in a Tweet after Vernon Unsworth had turned down an offer by Musk to build a submarine to save the trapped Thai football team. Musk did not name Unsworth but Unsworth claimed Read More
Category: Freedom of speech
Stokes story shows BBC needs to train presenters in privacy law
The Ben Stokes “news story” has revealed a gross lack of understanding of the privacy laws by the BBC Radio 4 presenter of the afternoon news program PM, Evan Davis. Her should really know better given the rising importance of this law. The BBC decided not to give the details splashed over the Read More
Opening up the copyright debate again
CC Greyweed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ unchanged You might have thought that the mighty Viacom versus YouTube case had settled all of the main issues about sharing platforms and copyright. YouTube won the 2007 case with the defence that it was an innocent platform that took down any infringing material when it was notified on it. This cleared the legal way for Read More
What are the limits to freedom of speech?
Two interesting and important statements about freedom of speech in seminars at the University of East London this week. One I agree with, another I do not. Actions not expressions First: laws should only deal with actions and not expressions. The law should punish what people do not what they say. Even if the expression Read More
ContentETC briefing prompts campaign to reform libel in Nigeria
A leading Nigerian media company plans to launch a campaign in Nigeria to reform Nigeria’s libel laws. Media Trust, a newspaper, internet and magazine publisher in the Nigerian capital, plans to lobby other publishers and journalists to mount this campaign. The aim is to reform the complicated libel laws to win more freedom of speech. Read More
Bercow wrongly done by lack of jury in libel
Sally Bercow *innocent face*, you are wronged. You have to find damages and lawyer costs for a tweet which the courts under libel said was a defamation of Lord McAlpine. Who judged the facts of that case: a judge. There was no jury to decide what the meaning of your tweet was. No jury on Read More
May right to raise threat of law to underpin independent press regulation post Leveson
Teresa May is right to say the government would introduce legislation to underpin an independent regulation of the press if the press itself does not come up with a suitable plan, and soon. That’s a good negotiating tactic. Her legions of critics will say: “But it’s not Government policy, listen to the PM.” But there Read More
10 things Leveson must not fluff this Thursday
Ten things Leveson must not fluff 1 Regulation must have legal backing: we can’t have the publishers opting out. 2 Editors and publishers, including owners, should have responsibility for what their employees do, as in corporate manslaughter. 3 Newspapers need to establishe internal compliance operations to implement a newly written code. 4 Clarify what is Read More
Murdoch custard pie over Bill of Rights
Rupert Murdoch has called for a Bill of Rights in the UK along the lines of the USA. In fact we have two already. We have the Bill of Rights of 1689. This created the first constitutional monarchy in the world. It separated the powers of the judiciary, the legislature and the executive. And it Read More
US Congress moves against “pirates”: Wikipedia protests
The US Congress is taking ”piracy” of US intellectual property seriously by proposing to attack the financial basis of foreign sites running copyright material without permission. Two acts are in Congress to let media owners force search engines to stop linking to “pirate” sites and stop US advertisers advertising. Wikipedia offline in protest The opposition Read More