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High Court clarifies blog libel liability

Blog owners must leave potentially libellous comments alone until notified that they are breaking the law or risk court punishment, the High Court has ruled.

Alex Hilton, operator of a Labour Party opinion blog, Labourhome.org, was taken to court by political activist Johanna Kaschke after a site user's submission accused the activist of roots in terrorism.

Writer John Gray's post stated that Ms Kaschke had been arrested in Germany for links with the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group. While not denying that she had been arrested, Ms Kashcke was not adjudged to be a terrorist supporter and sued the site for libel.

Mr Hilton claimed against the libel charge that, though he ran the site, he did not edit or vet the articles and should qualify for the same protection granted to search engines or ISPs under the E-commerce Directive.

Regulation 19 exempts information providers, such as ISPs, web hosts and search engines, from liability for the information they store or pass on to users as long as they are not involved in its creation or editing and remove it quickly once notified that it breaks the law.

But Mr Justice Stadlen ruled that although Mr Hilton had not edited the article, he "exercised some editorial control on parts of the website and in particular on the homepage."

During its time on the site, Mr Gray's article was added to the sites "Recommended" blog list. Upon its entry, the article was given far more detail, including date of upload, pictures and extracts on the homepage.

These activities, said Mr Justice Stadlen, "went beyond mere storage so that Regulation 19 immunity would not be available in respect of liability for defamatory words appearing on the homepage."

Any alteration, even correcting spelling mistakes and punctuation, removes protection under Regualtion 19, the court ruled, meaning Mr Hilton was liable for site content.

Mr Hilton's lawyer argued that such drastic measures give operators an "incentive not to monitor their sites with a view to removing offensive material", but the court rejected the argument and further trails will assess Ms Kaschke's claims for libel.