Jo Yeates' landlord

[4c4good]

I am very glad that the Sun and Mirror have been found to be in contempt of court; with their coverage potentially jeopardising his chances of a fair trial, had he been charged with this young woman's murder.

I'm glad for a number of reasons, but I salute the wise mumsnetters who warned last December of the real risks of repeating the shrill and irresponsible allegations they had seen in the tabloid press where a completely innocent man was openly judged to have murdered his young female tenant and was also linked to an unsolved murder 30 years before.

Why? Because he looked mildly eccentric, once dyed his hair blue, had a passion for music and poetry, and was possibly gay. He's also won substantial damages for libel. Good!

No, they are merely waiting for the next vulnerable target to come along.
No shame, that requires introspection and reflection, something which the tabloid/watercooler/gossip magazine set don't tend to do.

"There is a massive difference between a few private individuals speculating about a current case on an internet message board, and speculation or inaccuracies being published by national newspapers that draw a readership of millions. "

I'd agree there's a massive difference in scale but seeing as the thread started with a post containing the phrase:
"but I salute the wise mumsnetters "
Was always likely to get people to react and point put the fact that the thread on the matter was a massve witch-hunt where scores of people went beyond speculation and started making declarations of almost certainty.

secondly wrt:
"The first is the equivalent of a gossip round the water cooler, is harmless and cannot be construed as libel. "
Why do you think this? it's a defamatory statement, published to a 3rd party which is likely to lower the person in the eyes of right thinking members of society. It's almost the definition of a libelous statement.

It's not enough for the statement to be defamatory. The information has to be taken seriously if it is to be damaging enough to constitute libel. On a message board, for a start, we are anonymous... so I could say 'mayorquimby is a thief' and because no-one knows who I am and who mayorquimby is, then it is not libel because, even though it is defamatory and inaccurate, it's had no material impact on you whatsoever.

Similarly, I could start a thread saying 'The Archbishop of Canterbury deals drugs'... and, even though the target is identified and, even though it's a defamatory statement, because no-one is going to take that accusation seriously from some nutter called cogitoergosometimes it's not libellous either. If I were a journo publishing that the A of C was a dealer without any evidence, then it would be far more serious because of the weight of authority that goes with a newspaper.

In the GF case, MN carried that weight of authority (rather than the individual members) a) because MN is a significant website and b) because they are supposed to exercise some moderator control.

Internet libel payout here

Another here
"Caroline Addy, a barrister at One Brick Court, a leading defamation set, told Times Online that the payout appeared to be a ?surprisingly large amount?.

?It?s certainly the largest in my recollection," she said. "The publication must have been ongoing and over a sustained period of time.?

Ms Addy said that cases involving internet libel were growing because ?people often have no idea of the legal implications of putting things up online. They think ? falsely ? that they can hide their identities and say things they wouldn?t say if they had to put their name on it.?

Well I'd imagine the anonymity issue could be side-stepped by targetting MN as the publisher of the statements (deepest pockets and all that).
I'd agree that the scale is completely different, I'd disagree as to it not being able to be construed as libellous in anyway, I'm by no means saying that such an action would certainly be successful just that I think there may be an arguable case there.
Either way thanks for responding and addressing my questions.

Cogito - the laws around defamation apply no matter what the method of publication. The internet isn't beyond the law. If you send an email making criticisms of someone to a third party, and those criticisms would damage their reputation in the minds of reasonable people, you are potentially at risk. Very unlikely to be sued, but not impossible.

When you post on MN, you are publishing to, potentially, millions of people. What you say may be true, but you'd face such massive legal costs proving it that if a case were to go ahead, you'd have to settle. Unless you are a multi-millionaire.

Far more likely that a site such as MN could be sued, and lawyers could go after the individual poster if they wished. (Anyone who owns a house could be worth suing if the aggrieved person is so inclined.) MN could be given a court order to disclose the identity of the individual. In many cases it wouldn't even take that, people give away so much information online it's easy to trace them.

There's a campaign for reform of the defamation laws that does include proposals to update the law to reflect the growth of the internet. I think MN is involved. Sadly the key case that campaigners highlight is the wrong one to pin your mast to, IMO. The person who made the allegations in that case should have known damn well they were potentially risky, and the publisher certainly should have done. I read the original article at the time and was amazed a national, commercial publisher had allowed it through without substantial revision. The person who made the allegations got away with it but was ruddy lucky IMO.

(Email obviously not the same as internet, but my point is what judges would call modern technology is not beyond the law.)

It's not in dispute that the laws of libel apply equally to electronic communication as they do to print media. But it's in dispute whether a lot of mothers gassing speculatively on a message board about a man accused of a crime constitutes libel. Opinion, conspiracy theory, invective and rumour are the lifeblood of the message board environment. Saying 'he looks a nasty piece of work to me' and 'I wouldn't be surprised if he was a murderer' are not serious enough remarks to be libellous. (If they were, George Osborne and David Cameron's lawyers would be suing MN on a daily basis) The newspapers were rightly clobbered for dragging up all kinds of very damaging and inaccurate information in their stories. No-one on MN, to my recollection, added specific accusations of their own which is probably why the thread stayed put.

Yes they did! They directly accused specific friends and members of the family, and Mr Jefferies.

Cogito - I'm afraid you are confused. You seem, now, to realise that the law applies to the internet, but imagine there is some kind of bizarre exception for what you call mothers gassing on a message board. That's simply not true, and it's a dangerous mistake.

There is a clear difference between saying 'the prime minister's a tosser' and 'a named person who has been arrested in a murder enquiry is definitely guilty'.