How to use this Page

Freedom of expression is a central tenet of almost every modern society. This freedom however often comes into conflict with other rights, and can be misused and exploited. New media – especially on the internet – and new forms of media intrusion bring added complexity to old tensions between the individual’s rights to reputation and privacy on the one hand, and freedom of expression and the freedom of the press on the other.

How should free speech be balanced with the right to reputation? This question lies at the heart of defamation law. In the following videos, Lord Neuberger and Dr Matthew Collins QC discuss current challenges in defamation law, and the implications of recent changes to legislation enacted in the Defamation Act 2013. Lord Neuberger highlights urgent issues including privacy, confidentiality, data protection, freedom of information, and the Internet.

In this video, he draws attention to recent high-profile events such as the Leveson Inquiry and the phone-hacking trials, and points up key features of the new legislation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dr Matthew Collins QC outlines his perspective on the likely long-term impact of the 2013 Act.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Rt Hon the Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury Kt PC is President of the Supreme Court of the United Court of the United Kingdom. Dr Matthew Collins QC is a barrister based in Melbourne, Australia. He is also a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne, a door tenant at One Brick Court chambers in London, and the author of Collins on Defamation.

The post Free speech, reputation, and the Defamation Act 2013 appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• The Defamation Act 2013: reflections and reforms
• Preparing for BSC 2014
• Capitalism doesn’t fall apart

 

How can a society balance both the freedom of expression, including the freedom of the press, with the individual’s right to reputation? Defamation law seeks to address precisely this delicate equation. Especially in the age of the internet, where it is possible to publish immediately and anonymously, these concerns have become even more pressing and complex. The Defamation Act 2013 has introduced some of the most important changes to this area in recent times, including the defence for honest opinion, new internet-specific reforms protecting internet publishers, and attempts to curb an industry of “libel tourism” in the U.K.

Dr Matthew Collins SC introduces the Defamation Act 2013, and discusses the most important reforms and their subsequent implications.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dr Matthew Collins SC is a barrister based in Melbourne, Australia. He is a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne, a door tenant at One Brick Court chambers in London, and the author of Collins On Defamation.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only law articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post The Defamation Act 2013: reflections and reforms appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• Extreme makeover: England’s new defamation law
• The quest for ‘real’ protection for indigenous intangible property rights
• Overcoming everyday violence [infographic]

 

The Library Service to Prisoners Forum (part of the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies) has posted on the ALA website a Prisoner’ Right to Read Statement, for which they are seeking comments. The document is a vibrant plea against censorship and for the right to access information. It concludes with the following statement:

We believe rather that what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society and destroys the hopes of those segregated from society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours. When free people segregate some of their own, they acquire the responsibility to provide the tools required to bring the prodigal home. Chief among those tools is a right to read.

Writers Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, JM Coetzee and Umberto Eco are among those demanding that Liu Xiaobo be released. He has been in prison in China for a month after signing Charter 08.

This is the title of an interesting post by a colleague, Olivier Charbonneau. He writes about how the Harper government is refusing to make public a report by Health Canada that link Global warming to health problems. The government insists that the document is too big, and thus can only be provided on demand. A physician for Health Canada has therefore decided to make the report freely available for download on his blog. More info here and here.

Charbonneau mentions how in the USA, the government does not retain copyright on its publications, and that they are automatically put into the public domain, making them available immediately, without barriers to access. However true that may be, it does not stop the American government from pressuring scientists to submit reports that are convenient to the government, or have those reports rewritten by government policy makers. The Union of Concerned Scientists set up a webpage documenting political interference in science. Here is one example of how the government interefered with (and played down) a Congressional testimony on the dangers of global warming to public health.

Seems like the Harper government is taking notes.

In June, the OECD had a Ministerial Conference on the Future of the Internet Economy. They published a report which is intended to help countries shape policies concerning the Internet economy. The themes that are addressed are the following:

• Making Internet access available to everyone and everywhere.
• Promoting Internet-based innovation, competition and user choice.
• Securing critical information infrastructures and responding to new threats.
• Ensuring the protection of personal information, respect for intellectual property rights, and more generally a trusted Internet-based environment which offers protection to individuals, especially minors and other vulnerable groups.
• Promoting secure and responsible use of the Internet; and,
• Creating an environment that encourages infrastructure investment, higher levels of connectivity and innovative services and applications.

There were some positive policy suggestions that were made, such as:

• Promote a culture of openness and sharing of research data among public research communities.
• Raise awareness of the potential costs and benefits of restrictions and limitations on access to and sharing of research data from public funding.

The OECD Civil Society Forum, comprised of the OECD Civil Society Reference Group and the The Trade Union Advisory Committee, produced a paper (and their own conference) intended to bring to the attention of the OECD Ministers assembled and the OECD member countries the concerns of those not represented at the Ministerial conference.

Their paper highlights the following:

The policy goals for the Future Internet Economy should be considered within the broader framework of protection of human rights, the promotion of democratic institutions, access to information, and the provision of affordable and non-discriminatory access to advanced communication networks and services.

Their recommendations cover

• Freedom of expression
• Protection of Privacy and Transparency
• Consumer Protection
• Promotion of Access to Knowledge
• Internet Governance
• Promotion of Open Standards and Net Neutrality
• Balanced Intellectual Property Policies
• Support for Pluralistic Media

I’ve done a pretty fucking exhaustive swearing-related FFL before but this fucking article is a nice fucking addition to that list. Fuck yeah!

- JH

• How Swearing Works
• BBC’s List of Most Offensive Words (in ranked order)
• Urban Dictionary - a user-created dictionary of slang including many offensive terms. Great for understanding the latest teen slang.
• The Great Internet Swearword Project - picking between two choices helps define the “best swear words in the world“.
• Learn To Swear in any Language
• Letter Cursing - How to Swear Without Swearing
• The Greatest Swearing Moments in Cinematic History

- JH

In keeping with the topic of the day, here’s a report on internet filtering from the National Coalition Against Censorship which is admittedly, a bit dated, having been produced in 2001. But it gives an excellent overview of many of the issues and problems being discussed in the wake of the LPL debate. And an update of the report in 2006 shows that the same concerns with internet filtering software remain to this day.

Here are some examples of what happens when you filter:

• CYBERsitter blocked a news item on the Amnesty International site after detecting the phrase “least 21.” The offending sentence described “at least 21” people killed or wounded in Indonesia.
• SurfWatch blocked the University of Kansas’s Archie R. Dykes Medical library upon detecting the word “dykes.”
• X-Stop blocked the “Let’s Have an Affair” catering company and searches for Bastard Out of Carolina and “The Owl and the Pussy Cat.”
• WebSense blocked a Texas cleanup project under the category of “sex,” and The Shoah Proj-ect, a Holocaust remembrance page, under the category of “racism/hate.”
• Cyber Patrol blocked a Knights of Columbus site and a site for aspiring dentists as “adult/sexually explicit.”
• BESS and SurfControl blocked curriculum materials on Populism because they also contained information about National Socialism. Symantec blocked the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun sites while allowing sites associated with gun control organizations.
• BESS blocked a site on fly fishing, a guide to allergies, and a site opposing the death penalty as “pornography.” It also blocked all Google and AltaVista image searches under its category of “pornography.”

- JH

Oy, librarians! No doubt you’ve already heard. But in case you haven’t, the push for direct-to-consumer advertising in Canada is marching on. However, if you like acronyms, it’s DCTA.

CanWest Global Communications Corporation stands to increase its profits should a lawsuit they are waging in the name of ‘freedom of expression’ succeed. While the public health system is strained under the weight of increasing costs that are largely the result of pharmaceutical expenses, CanWest seems to be thinking to themselves … why should Pfizer get all the cash? How can we get a piece of this action?

I say “they” because a corporation such as CanWest Global is not an individual. It is a group of individuals. If you’ve seen The Corporation, you will know the importance of this distinction. Despite this, under the law corporations are viewed as having the same rights as individuals. So does a ‘corporation’ as an individual have a moral responsibility to society? What about the people who run that corporation? This lawsuit is claiming that CanWest Global’s right to freedom of expression is being violated. Does a corporation have this ‘right’? Better yet, do they have the ‘right’ to ‘freely express’ an advertisement on behalf of another multi-million dollor corporation, especially when they stand to profit from airing that ad?

Still reading? Back to direct-to-consumer advertising. The basic skinny is that it is legal in the US and New Zealand, Canada not so much. It gets muddy. Canadians have been exposed to drug ads through the American media, and in Canada ads for over the counter medications are permitted as are ads that don’t recommend a drug for a specific condition. Americans and New Zealanders are exposed to the “feeling X? ask your doctor and buy Y” kind of marketing. According to the Toronto Star, US spending increased 10x over the course of 11 years, from 1994 -2005. Open Medicine, the British Medical Journal, Toronto Star, a recent CBC podcast, the Canadian Pharmacists Association and the CMAJ all have good information describing how direct-to-consumer advertising impacts health spending. No one seems to be a fan.

Direct-to-consumer advertising is not ‘free speech’. Advertising messages are carefully constructed bids to pitch products. They are created by talented, creative and well-compensated advertising teams. Legalizing direct-to-consumer advertising would permit profit-seeking corporations to compete with public health interests and public (as in your tax) dollars. As librarians, we can inform the public that for safe and effective medical and health information, ads are not credible sources given that they are rife with branding strategies and backed by well-funded market research. Even if some ads are deemed ‘legal’ and hit the airwaves, they are in fact not ‘health information’. Unfortunately, the research suggests their impact is still huge.

Your Media notes that it is not safe to assume that it will be easy to prove that CanWest Global does not have a case. So you may be thinking, what can a librarian do in a situation such as this. Let’s consider some options …

First, whether you are a health librarian, academic librarian, public librarian, or special librarian - make your patrons aware of this issue:
a) CanWest Global is attempting to encroach on the public’s rights and they have a right to be informed about it
b) from an media/information literacy standpoint, DCTA exemplifies what NOT to use for informative purposes.

While I’m all for seeking alternative sources to health information, DCTA stinks. Freedom of expression being the wonderful thing that it is, you can exercise yours by talking to your Member of Parliament, sending a dirty note to the CRTC, and ccing whatever you do to the CanWest Global turkeys.

Oy, that was long. Thanks for hanging in there.
-PC-

(Thanks to Kerry M. for the tip!)

- JH

May we turn from the usual U.S. bad guys (the Federal Communications Commission) and take a look at the Postal Regulatory Commission for a moment? They’re responsible for setting postage rates in the United States and they’re into some bad stuff. In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Katrina Vanden Heuvel says that the secrecy of the Postal Regulatory Commission “makes the FCC look like a Vermont commune.” The PRC actually accepted a rate plan from Time Warner (and rejected the one put forth by the U.S. Postal Service) which is going to favour large magazine publishers over small ones. Timeline information is available here.

Says FreePress:

Under the original plan, all publishers would have a mostly equal increase (approx. 12 percent) in the cost for mailing their publications. The Time Warner plan overturned this level playing field to favor large, ad-heavy magazines like People at the expense of smaller publications like In These Times and The American Spectator. It penalizes thousands of small- to medium-sized outlets with disproportionately higher rates while locking in privileges for bigger companies.

The Nation, for example, would be expected to pay $500 000 more per year in postage fees (according to itself). It all goes into effect July 15 unless, of course, we stop it from happening.

Please help tackle this ridiculousness on the FreePress site. Also, have a read through Robert McChesney’s letter to the masses.

If the plans go through, perhaps we Canadians should start looking for facilities to house all the American publishers moving to this side of the border.

Thanks to DD.

-SIO

Chip Ward’s illuminating article on how the library has become a de facto ’shelter’ in place of the state’s shrunken safety net was illuminating commentary on how marginalized ppl are often perceived as non-citizens, non-persons, non-existant nuisances in the collective conscience.

This seems like an opportune moment to give some props to some ‘information’ efforts that seek to give voiceless groups space to speak for themselves by putting the media in their own hands.

First is Homeless Nation a Canada wide non-profit organization that provides an online community and forum for homeless people to express their point of view, and an opportunity for the public to interact with and learn some things about being homeless in Canada. Launched in June of 2006, membership has grown to over 2000 participants.

Mentions of Homeless Nation in the media can be found here and here and in Rabble podcasts here.

Second is an archives that is documenting the history and cultural heritage of people who’ve been in contact with the psychiatric system.

Librarians, carve out a wee moment in your hectic schedules check out the Psychiatric Survivor Archives, Toronto. It’s a forum and space that aims to preserve the history of psychiatric survivors for current and future generations. PSAT seeks to create an opportunity to restore a sense of agency and personhood to psychiatric survivors, to value their lived experience, history and culture, and to engage a voiceless and stigmatized population in the democratic process of self expression.

Articles here and here published recently in the Toronto Star speak to MAD pride, a movement akin to the ‘queering’ of gay/lesbian culture.

- PC

This week is Freedom to Read Weekf in Canada. I’ve been a bit remiss in posting relevant information here, even as I’ve been doing a daily post on the topic over on my personal blog which could’ve been easily cross-posted here. (Next year!)

But I do have something that I wanted to cross-post on both sites to close out the week: the results of the CLA’s Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom’s web survey titled “Tracking Challenged Resources in Canadian Libraries” (PDF) for the year 2006.

This report doesn’t include every instance of book challenges in Canada last year but does give a good overview of some of the types of materials that get challenged, the reasons why and the response of and/or actions taken by the reporting library.

Thanks to Toni Samek, who is chair of that committee, for permission to post this document.

- JH