Originally Posted by
Raffles
Since tangentially that is aimed at me, I didn't actually need to censor anyone yesterday despite my warning.
However, the UK has the strictest libel laws of any major economy and UK bloggers have no choice but to work around it. Remember there is no 'freedom of speech' defence here.
Until recently, when it was banned, our courts were clogged with foreign claimants suing other foreign publishers for libel, on the grounds that at least 1 copy of the publication had been sold in or posted to the UK. They could not sue in their own courts because their own laws did not hold it defamatory. Overseas publishers stopped selling their titles here or accepting UK subscribers for fear of being sued for an innocuous remark.
I'm quite familiar with the UK's reputation in that regard and venue shopping in the above-mentioned ways. Libel tourism destination of choice, some would have said.
My post wasn't aimed at your blog, but your blog certainly was somewhere in my mind when my interest in this area got re-ignited enough to spark me into posting. That said, if asking (and answering) a question about the factual history of redacted communication in a different venue is considered "libelous", then that just widens the gap between history and historiography and runs counter to objective discovery. Objective discovery, or attempts at objective discovery, would be considered defamation under UK laws? As I understood it, fair reports of allegations are not generally actionable as it is considered an allowable defense. Did that change with the Defamation Act of 2013, and are there new causes of action? I have some doubt about that.
The reason I posted as I did here was sparked by what I read on FT quite some time back -- something that long precedes this section of FT -- and then indeed what I later read on your blog.
There are other things that are posted on FT and on blogs that may be subject to legal pursuit in some jurisdiction or another on much the same basis or even a separate basis -- "hate 'speech'" kind of things was also one of the two other things that came to my mind earlier. However, that doesn't necessarily lead directly to legal problems even when not having the US 2010 SPEECH Act as shield and sword.