LONDON -- A high court hearing a defamation case is expected to rule on a prosecutor's request that an Internet service provider be held liable for the information stored on its servers. The decision could set a precedent for British libel law.
At a pretrial hearing here, a judge heard the prosecution's request to strip Demon Internet of its "innocent dissemination" defense under the 1996 Defamation Act. The suit was filed by physicist Laurence Godfrey, who for several years has run a personal crusade to force the Internet to submit to national libel laws.
Daniel Lloyd, legal adviser to Internet Freedom, a British campaign group, called Godfrey's suit against Demon "a worrying incursion on free speech."
"An ISP is no different than a newsstand or a newspaper," Lloyd said. "If Demon loses the case, it will place an impossible burden on all ISPs to monitor the content of Internet material."
Demon Internet spokesman Steve Robinson declined to comment for this story.
The defamation case centers on a message posted in 1997 to the newsgroup soc.culture.thai. The message, which appeared to be from Godfrey, was in fact a forgery. Godfrey claims the fake message contained damaging allegations of a personal nature and is suing the Demon Internet for defamation.
At Wednesday's pre-trial hearing, Nick Braithwaite, Godfrey's solicitor, asked the judge to strike out that part of the defamation law which shields ISPs from liability so long as they have taken "reasonable care" to prevent defamatory publications. The judge is expected to rule on the request next week.
The lengths to which firms must go to demonstrate reasonable care are not clear.
Most ISPs in Britain routinely require customers to agree not to make defamatory postings. Beyond that, most ISPs assume their responsibility rests solely with the storage and transmission of data and messages, not with their content.
