New York Times, April 1, 2000
British Internet Service Provider Settles News Group Libel Case By SARAH LYALL LONDON, March 31 -- A British Internet service provider has agreed to pay a substantial sum to a physicist who says he was libeled by messages posted on electronic bulletin boards carried by the company, in a move that lawyers fear will severely curtail people's ability to speak freely in cyberspace. The company, Demon Internet, said on Thursday that it would pay about $25,000 in damages to the physicist, Laurence Godfrey, as well as Mr. Godfrey's court costs, which are likely to come to several hundred thousand dollars. The case stems from a message posted in January 1997 that was "squalid, obscene and defamatory," Mr. Godfrey said, and another a year later that Mr. Godfrey said was also defamatory. It is still unclear what implications the settlement will have on companies based in the United States, where Internet service providers are held to be no more liable for the messages posted on them than the post office would be for the contents of letters it delivers, or a telephone company for conversations it carries. http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/03/cyber/cyberlaw/31law.html March 31, 2000 Judge Says Old Rule on Libel Suits Applies Online Demon's decision to settle the case, in the face of mounting evidence that it would not have won in court, is significant, lawyers said, because it establishes that British Internet service providers -- companies that provide access to the Internet -- could be liable for the messages posted on the forums they carry, regardless of where the messages originate. And although it does not require Internet service providers here to screen messages in advance, it does mean that they will be obligated to respond quickly to complaints about messages, and remove those that might be libelous. "This is going to have a chilling effect on free speech," said Adam Taylor, head of the e-commerce and technology group at Withers, a law firm in London. "As a result of this settlement, Internet service providers are going to be very nervous. When anybody makes the slightest complaint about anything, they're going to be pulling material down. If they don't, they leave themselves liable to the kind of defamatory actions taken in this case." American companies would probably be at risk only if they had physical assets like office buildings in Britain, First Amendment lawyers said. "The short answer is that this will have no effect because the law in the United States is very different in that the Internet service providers have as close to absolute immunity as you can get," said Steven Lieberman, a partner specializing in First Amendment law at the Washington firm of Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Kurz. "But it gets more complicated when you realize that messages posted by U.S.-based Internet service providers can be read outside of the U.S., that a reader in the U.K. can have access to something you post in the U.S." But Mark Stephens, a media lawyer at the London firm of Finers Stephens Innocent, said that in a medium with no national borders, the settlement had important global implications. "This brings the real prospect of Internet service providers, wherever they're located in the world, and whether or not they're protected by the free speech guarantees of the Bill of Rights in America, being dealt with harshly, robustly and expensively in the British courts," Mr. Stephens said. Mr. Stephens said that the service providers would be particularly vulnerable to threats from the rich and litigious. "It's open season," he said. "This exposes Internet companies to the ability on the part of the rich and powerful to censor them. If you're rich and powerful, you could sue the Internet company to take something off the Internet edition of an American newspaper, because you know they're going to censor the newspaper even if the newspaper doesn't censor itself." It was on Jan. 12, 1997, that the first message at issue in the case appeared, as part of the discussion in a news group carried by Demon's news servers. News groups are free-wheeling discussion groups on every imaginable subject, where users can post messages as they would on a bulletin board, to be read and commented on by others. They are one of the original services provided by the Internet and are precious forums for those who regard the Internet as the final frontier of free speech. Discussions can be extremely heated, and not infrequently descend into personal attacks. Posted in the United States on the soc.culture.thai news group, which is devoted to discussions about Thailand, the message was said to have made rude and offensive allusions to Mr. Godfrey's personal life and purported to come from Mr. Godfrey himself, although it was actually a forgery. The message was posted in the news group only for about two weeks, following standard procedure. Mr. Godfrey was extremely upset about the message, and in a series of faxes asked Demon to remove it from the news group. When the company failed to do so, he sued. He sued again the following July, when another posting, on the uk.legal newsgroup, made further rude remarks about him. He did not sue the people who posted the messages. Mr. Godfrey's solicitor, Nick Braithwaite, did not return several telephone calls today, and it was unclear exactly what the substance of the remarks made against Mr. Godfrey was. He is no stranger to libel actions. In 1994, a fellow physicist, Philip Hallam-Baker, agreed to pay Mr. Godfrey an unspecified amount in damages after Mr. Godfrey sued him for libel in connection with a number of postings Mr. Hallam-Baker made on the Internet raising doubts about his professional competence. The settlement may have important global implications. That made Mr. Godfrey, a familiar figure in various news groups, decidely unpopular with the Internet's free speech champions, who then began posting further provocative messages about him. Mr. Godfrey responded with further lawsuits against the people posting the messages. More than half a dozen of them were settled, for amounts in the $15,000 range. British libel law is much more weighted to plaintiffs than the libel law in America, and Demon had almost no choice but to settle this case. In an interim ruling, a judge in Britain's High Court ruled last year that the company could not rely on a defense claiming that it was merely an innocent disseminator of the defamatory messages, as it had sought to do. That defense, the judge said, "is in law hopeless," and Demon should be treated as the publisher of the material. Demon decided not to appeal that ruling, and ultimately decided it had little chance of prevailing in court. Mr. Godfrey said he was pleased with the outcome. "I'm quite sure there is no right to libel other people on the Internet, to concoct fabricated allegations and try to destroy people's reputations," he said outside court. A spokeswoman for the company, which is now owned by Thus, a telecom and internet firm in Glasgow, said that it is striving to comply with the law requiring it to respond to complaints by removing offending messages from its news groups. But she said it was impossible for the company to monitor all the postings it carries, which total more than a million a day, enough to fill all the books in a bookshelf a mile and a quarter long. "Thus remains convinced that the law has not kept pace with the development of the Internet," the spokeswoman said. While the company now routinely removes material that is "unsuitable or defamatory," she said, "it is contrary to common sense to make Internet service providers responsible for the millions of items carried on the Internet."
Thursday, 30 March, 2000, 18:08 GMT Demon settles net libel case A UK internet service provider has settled a libel case in a move which could have wide-ranging implications for online publishers. Laurence Godfrey will be paid £15,000 plus legal costs -- which could top £200,000 -- by Demon Internet after allegedly defamatory postings about him appeared in newsgroups. Demon had previously said the case would affect the entire ethos of free speech on the internet. Dr Godfrey alleged that the company failed to remove defamatory material from a newsgroup it hosted, in the first case of its kind to go before the English courts. He said after the case: "I am happy with the settlement. I don't think there is a right, in fact I'm quite sure there's no right, to libel other people on the internet, to concoct fabricated allegations and try to destroy people's reputations." Dr Godfrey said his argument had been vindicated and he now hoped ISPs would act responsibly if anyone else found themselves in a similar situation. Although such discussion forums are often full of robust, forthright and even offensive opinions posted by individuals, the case hinged on whether Demon could be treated as publisher of the material. The case will affect other ISPs -- all of which host newsgroups -- who fear they could become liable for offensive material which millions of their users might write. If the ISPs become more cautious over what material they allow to be published -- by screening submissions or suspending websites -- they could inflame the debate over freedom of expression or damage internet-based businesses. Under English law ISPs are not held to have been the publishers of defamatory material providing they satisfy two criteria. They must prove they took reasonable care to ensure such material was not published, and once alerted to a problem, took steps to resolve it. Dr Godfrey's action against Demon related to a message posted in 1997 on soc.culture.thai, purportedly coming from him and containing damaging allegations of a personal nature. He said he asked Demon to remove the message but the ISP refused. The message was copied to its servers around the world and many others containing newsgroup messages. In a statement, Thus, Demon Internet's parent company, said: "Concluding this matter in a reasonable way is in the best interests of the company and its customers. "Thus remains convinced that the law has not kept pace with the development of the internet and will work with our colleagues in the industry to lobby for modernisation of the law. "Thus will press the government for recognition that ISPs
should not be liable for the millions of items carried on
the internet every day."
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