Blogger can't sue over comment, rules High Court

A man who was criticised in the comments section of his own blog cannot sue for defamation because he did not delete the comment when he discovered it, the High Court has said. The Court said that the man consented to the comment's publication. Christopher Carrie is the author of a self-published book in which he claims to …

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute...

...the only way the court would accept the charge of defamation would be if he destroyed the evidence by deleting the comment?

How would he then prove that the defamation had taken place?

[geist]

Should have

Should have said he didnt delete the comment as it was evidence and product server logs for evidence of reading

[Wize]

How do you retain proof that someone made the comment...

...if you have to delete said comment when you find it?

The comment will include date/time stamps and IP address. Deleting it will remove the evidence.

[Dan B]

Judge... Judy?

Could he not be leaving the posting there as evidence?

If it is deleted, apart from a screen grab, there was no proof it was ever there. (Save for the wayback machine if it was indexed)

Also I am pretty sure that at least a few people would have looked at the blog/posting if only because of some blog software notifying other sites of updates (pingbacks? I could be completely wrong here) - could he not use the server access logs in his defence?

Don't really care either way tbh

[Elmer Phud]

Nice one from the Judge

"Mr Justice Eady said that it is not sufficient simply to assert that an article's appearance online means that it has been read."

Or, "Bloggers are so full of shit they think that just because they posted something then the whole world is falling over each other to read it."

Blogging - Onanism for the new century

[Anonymous Coward]

Inconsistent Eady

"Mr Justice Eady said that it is not sufficient simply to assert that an article's appearance online means that it has been read.

"There is no presumption in law to the effect that placing material on the Internet leads automatically to a substantial publication,""

Seems to be at odds with what Eady said in Mardas vs New York Times [yes, that's right, a case being heard in a British court between an American and a Greek], that these things "cannot depend upon a numbers game, with the court fixing an arbitrary minimum". Is Eady finally seeing the light, or is it just that the plaintiff isn't a billionaire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof?

If he had deleted the comment, there would have been no defamation and no need for evidence.

[Peyton]

proof

screenshot + log file + witness + printout + lots of other crap

-_-;

[Pinky]

Was deletion the only option?

Never mind deleting the comment - every blogging system I've seen supports hiding comments. No deletion, no destruction of evidence, and no "tacit approval" defense available. Of course, this does require the user to actually RTFM.

[Steve Roper]

A nice precedent

"There is no presumption in law to the effect that placing material on the Internet leads automatically to a substantial publication"

Which means that simply making a file available to others does not mean it has been "published" - or distributed. Therefore uploading a torrent file does not mean anyone has downloaded it. I hope the next filesharer to be pulled up by the copypigs draws on this interesting precedent.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's that Bilbo?

The nasty man got mauled by the troll?

Oh dear!

[William Oakley]

Hurrah

If he deletes the comment then, no, he cannot prove defamation has taken place. This is because defamation has not taken place and there is no case.

The claimant should prefer that no defamation takes place, rather than defamation has taken place and he recieves compensation. The only reason the claimant would prefer the latter is if he was greedy and the compensation exceeded the damages done to him.