California Defamation Law Blog : California Defamation Lawyer & Attorney : Adrianos Facchetti Law Firm : Los Angeles CA : Defamation Law Blog

This is a must read article by Mark Sweeney published in the UK's Guardian. While the result would clearly be the same in the United States due to the application of the Communications Decency Act, it is interesting to see how the High Court comes to the same conclusion.

In a nutshell, the High court held that Google was merely a facilitator and not a publisher, and therefore not responsible for third party statements/content.

As the article points out, this certainly is a "landmark" decision. Perhaps it means the Brits are reconsidering their current libel laws.

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The UK Ministry of Justice announced new proposals today aimed at cutting the rising costs associated with defamation cases. One of the proposals is placing a cap on hourly rates or setting fixed maximum rates for attorneys.  Presumably, this would discourage some attorneys in the UK from filing defamation suits in favor of pursuing other, more profitable cases. It may have the unintended consequence of encouraging defamatory speech as well.

But that's what governments are good at--creating unintended outcomes, which are potentially worse than the original problem.

And yet I wonder . . . what proposals will the UK Ministry of Justice ultimately adopt to limit the costs of defamation? Will any states in the U.S. adopt similar proposals?

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