IP: ISPs and libel liability

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1999 14:34:37 -0500
To: farber () cis upenn edu
From: David Akin <dakin () nationalpost com>
Subject: ISPs and libel liability

[Hi Dave - I don't think the headline writer on my story got it exactly
right. Nonetheless, a British court may soon decide that issue in England]

The National Post
Friday, February 26, 1999
ISPs held responsible for control of content
Legal Liability: The peril is they may remove messages that are legal
By David Akin
Financial Post
When an Englishman started running down Canada in an obscure corner of
cyberspace, Canadian graduate student Michael Dolenga responded in
time-honoured Internet fashion: He called him names.
What Mr. Dolenga didn't know was that he was engaging in a flame war -- the
phrase used to describe Internet exchanges full of unpleasantries, insults,
and ridicule -- with Laurence Godfrey, a British physicist who has become
notorious in England for filing libel suits whenever he feels he has been
impugned in an Internet forum.
Mr. Godfrey's actions, though, are unique in that he sues not only the
authors of any alleged slander but also goes after the organizations that
enabled the authors to gain access to the Internet.
Defendants named in his suits included The Toronto Star, the University of
Minnesota, New Zealand Telecom, and the Melbourne PC Users Group.
Rest of story at:
http://www.nationalpost.com/financialpost.asp?s2=canadianbusiness&s3=news&f=9902
26/2315588.html

[The followup story wasn't posted to the National Post site, so I must pass
the text on to you:]

National Post
Wednesday, March 3, 1999
PAGE C4
Defender of Canada thumbs his nose at British court's libel finding
By David Akin
A British court has ordered a British Columbia man to pay (ps)15,000
($36,260 Cdn) for libelling an English physicist in an Internet discussion
forum.
Legal experts believe it to be just the second time a court has awarded
damages in an Internet libel case. But experts also say physicist Laurence
Godfrey may have trouble enforcing the judgment against Michael Dolenga,
who lives in Victoria.
In 1995, Mr. Dolenga was a graduate student in biochemistry at Cornell
University in Ithaca, N.Y., when the libel occurred. Mr. Godfrey had made
some comments that impugned Canada and Canadians, to which Mr. Dolenga
responded by calling Mr. Godfrey names.
``Read his comments about Canada -- a boring place, Canadians have no
merit, no talent whatsoever, no Canadians of note, stuff like that,'' Mr.
Dolenga said in an interview. ``In some of my postings I would defend
Canada very articulately . . . and some of it was name-calling. Go read any
newsgroup and you'll see the childish insults that are flung back and forth
and that's all it was; just some juvenile name-calling.''
But Mr. Godfrey, who has filed several libel lawsuits in British courts
against defendants such as The Toronto Star and the University of
Minnesota, believed Mr. Dolenga's comments caused harm to his reputation.
Mr. Dolenga did not defend the lawsuit and, as a result, the British court
entered a default judgment against him. On Friday, the court ordered Mr.
Dolenga to pay Mr. Godfrey (ps)15,000 in aggravated damages, plus (ps)1,250
in legal costs.
``I'm not disappointed by the judgment,'' Mr. Godfrey said yesterday.
``It's a substantial award. It sets some kind of scale.''
Mr. Godfrey has another libel lawsuit pending against Demon Internet,
England's largest dial-up Internet service provider. He said he intends to
have a Canadian court enforce the judgment, but Canadian legal experts say
such a request would not be automatically enforced, particularly in a
situation where no defence of the suit was made. Mr. Dolenga could not be
reached for comment this week but in an interview last week said: ``I don't
have an address [in Britain] and I don't own any property in Britain.
Basically, my stance is I'm not recognizing the British court's
jurisdiction and the hell with it.''

David Akin / Technology Reporter
National Post / dakin () nationalpost com
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