'Blogger' had to pay damages for defamation -- Boards?

You obviously haven't tasted my ban stick. You'd prefer to be sued.

Well, the first person I banned from this forum was banned primarily because he defamed certain members of our government. I wouldn't have met out the penalty had it not been a serious offence.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054893483

Both the poster and Boards.ie Ltd. are potentially liable for any defamatory comment posted on this website. It's governed by the same laws as any other medium, and damages are potentially much heavier as the internet reaches so many people (and especially since boards gets returned in the first few pages of almost every google search now)!

We have to try to commute the offence, which is why there are moderators who can edit posts and ban users for these sorts of things. We don't just do it because of some sort of personal vendetta against society as a whole. Or for the power trip. Or because of differences of opinion. By showing that we removed material immediately, and also that it got a certain number of hits etc. we can limit our liability somewhat.

Realistically, this is probably one of the safest fora from boards.ie Ltd's point of view, because there are two mods here with legal knowledge who can recognise potential liabilities for boards as they arise, and deal with them. On other boards, people might not recognise the likes of defamation as quickly, or may not realise the implications of it.

That said, many of the other moderators are well able to recognise dodgy material, and will air on the side of caution for the most part and just delete it.

Luckily, the matter hasn't ever arisen for us yet, so it remains to be seen what outcomes there might be, but to answer your original question: yes, boards, and the user can be held liable, just as anyone else can.

I think the effects of that link are too u****ortant to have any remedy in the court system. Who's going to sue for that? Making sure you don't click these links is pretty much internet users should be aware of.

I'm not aware of any precedents on the issue. To be honest, I don't think it's something that has been considered on a large scale yet.

Presumably there would be some right to recover if the damage warranted it. If it was a virus that wiped a hard disk, and there had been valuable information on it, then yes, I'd imagine there'd be a case.

No, it's not a mere conduit. The directive you're talking about (which classifies these things) is Directive 2000/31/EC and it defines the following ISP categories:

http://www.digitalrights.ie/2006/01/06/libel-laws-in-ireland/ wrote:

• “Mere conduit” essentially means providing no more than a telephonic network. A service provider who falls within the definition of a “mere conduit” is given immunity and will not be liable for damages or for any criminal sanction as a result of any transmission of information.

• “Caching”. ISPs often keep temporary copies of web pages on their servers so that users can access them more quickly. This kind of “automatic, immediate and temporary storage of information … for the sole purpose of making more efficient onward transmission of the information” will not render an ISP liable for defamatory statements contained in the cached pages. However, such immunity is lost where the ISP does not act quickly to remove a copy of a page when they are aware that the original page has been removed or that its removal has been ordered by a court.

• “Hosting” is the storage of information provided by subscribers. Large companies and organizations are their own hosts, but the sites of small to medium sized organizations and personal web-pages, blogs and discussion board sites will tend to be hosted by an ISP. Under the regulations, hosts are given an immunity from libel liability, which can be lost where a host is aware of defamatory content and fails to act expeditiously to remove or block the offending content.

Boards would more than likely fall into the "caching" category (it wouldn't appear to be a "hosting" ISP because the hosting body is Hostings365). Thus, it won't be liable, once the material is removed quickly, but will be otherwise.

No, hostings aren't liable.

That's an interesting question. It would seem unfair to hold a search engine liable. I suppose the proximity argument would come into play here. A search engine is hardly proximate enough to the publication to be held liable for it. There may also be a defence for innocent publication.

It's easy to speculate on defamation and the correct application of defamation laws, but realistically, it's impossible to fully guage outcomes in the courts because defamation cases are heard by a jury. It seems that lawyers, let alone laypersons, have extreme difficulty in evaluating the laws on defamation, so results can be perverse (eg Reynolds v Mallocco).

Only if you rely on the defence of Fair comment, otherwise the burden of proof is on him.

Ah, this is where the court uses a neat legal trick called brains. It's usually fairly obvious who someone is talking about in a defamation case. In fact, it has never been raised as a defence in a defamation case. "Aw, I was actually talking about the other Bono there, your honour".

If it's unclear who the publisher is talking about, using your example "John Smith", well then no one would be able to claim because it would be impossible to say that any damage had been done. I've a fairly republican name, and a number of my namesakes have been connected with various bombings in the past few decades, but it would be ridiculous for me to try to sue a newspaper for printing that someone with the same name as me had "bombed London in 1984", wouldn't it.

If it isn't clear which "Terry Smith" is being talked about, then I can't imagine how a court could indict, but because it's a jury that decides, anything is possible.

It depends on how quickly you remove material. I'd imagine the best way of dealing with that question is if it comes to your attention that something is potentially libelous, then remove it immediately, without thinking about it. It's utterly no use to say, "ah, I left it up because I wasn't sure about it".

The court may look at how many hits the page got in assessing the damages to be paid. If only one or two people saw it, it might be ok, whereas if thousands of people saw it, you'd have a hard job saying that no damage was done.