The long Inforrm summer break ends today. Although we have had regular postings over the summer the new legal term begins on Monday 2 October 2017 so we will be resuming regular weekly round ups and “term time” posting.  

We have published three “Summary Summer Round Up” during our summer break

The most important media law development over the summer was the decision of the Court of Appeal in Lachaux v Independent Print ([2017] EWCA Civ 1334) – welcomed by claimant lawyers and a vindication of the analysis of the respondent’s counsel Adrienne Page QC (see her two pieces published on Inforrm in 2015: Defamation Act 2013: Does section 1 replace the test of the hypothetical reasonable reader by that of the twitter troll? Part 1 – Adrienne Page QC; Defamation Act 2013: Does section 1 replace the test of the hypothetical reasonable reader by that of the twitter troll?, Part 2 – Adrienne Page QC).  It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will grant the Independent permission to appeal (the defendant in the other action, AOL, is not seeking permission to appeal).

The other important event was the publication of the Data Protection Bill – a 218 page colossus which, from the media law perspective aims preserve the status quo (see our post here).  We draw attention to some initial observations on the Bill from the the Panopticon and Hawktalk blogs.

The most popular Inforrm posts of the summer covered a variety of themes:

Finally, attentive readers will have noted that the blog’s URL has changed to https://inforrm.org/ – this has the effect of eliminating the adverts which were becoming increasingly prominent on the free version of WordPress.

So, welcome back to our readers.  As usual, we would like to encourage contributions to debates in all areas of media related law.  Please contact us at inforrmeditorial@gmail.comif you are interested in contributing.