The long running and high profile “blogger defamation” case of Baglow v Smith has been determined in the defendant’s favour. In a judgment handed down on 23 February 2015 ( [2015] ONSC 1175), the Ontario Superior Court of Justice held that the operators of a right wing message board were publishers of defamatory material concerning a left wing blogger. However, the claim failed because defendants were entitled to rely on the defence of “fair comment”, The case addressed, for the first time, a number of issues concerning “blogging and the law of defamation. Continue reading
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Tag: Bloggers
As one would expect, the subject of applying regulation to the internet, has come under particular scrutiny from the online community as a result of proposals contained in the draft Royal Charter on self-regulation of the press and amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill. On the whole they have been criticised as an unwarranted extension which will have a “chilling effect” on internet publishers. Is this an accurate assessment of the proposals? Continue reading
There’s quite a lot to digest in the recent decision of Hogan J. in Cornec v. Morrice & Ors. Most of the judgment deals with wider issues in the protection of journalists’ sources, and unsurprisingly the media coverage so far tends to focus on this aspect. But reading the judgment, I was struck by the way in which it considered whether non-traditional media could also benefit from similar protections. In particular, it appears to be the first Irish judgment to consider the position of bloggers. Continue reading
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