The 1 November 2020 marked the fourth anniversary of the commencement of the Department of Justice’s current review of Ireland’s defamation laws. In late October, a newspaper leader and a blogpost provided updates on where we are on our slow boat to defamation reform. Continue reading
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Tag: Eoin O’Dell (Page 1 of 4)
The truth, as Oscar Wilde has Algernon Moncrieff remark to Jack Worthing in Act I of The Importance of Being Ernest, is rarely pure and never simple. Nowhere is this more evident than in a defamation courtroom. At common law, the defence of justification to a claim for defamation averred that the words complained of, in their natural and ordinary meaning, were true in substance and in fact. Continue reading
1. Balancing competing rights
Irish defamation cases are increasingly replete with comments stating the need to balance the constitutional right to freedom of expression with the constitutional right to a good name. Continue reading
Last October and November, I sketched the evolution of the government’s proposals for a digital safety commissioner. Following a consultation process last Spring, and missing the deadline of the end of the year by a few weeks, they have published their proposals for the general scheme of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill. Continue reading
A story in the newspapers this morning has made me think once again about some of the weaknesses in Irish law relating to damages for data protection infringements. Continue reading
The latin maxim “de minimis non curat lex” is usually translated as “the law does not concern itself with trifles”, meaning the courts will not consider trifling matters. Christmas may be the time for trifles (like the Christmas trifle pictured right), but the Courts are not the place for them. Continue reading
In my earlier post on the demise of the UK’s current age-verification plans for online porn – and what that might mean for Ireland’s proposed Digital Safety Commissioner, I noted that long-standing Irish Government policy is to establish such a Commissioner, and that the current timetable is that it is intended to bring forward the necessary legislation before the end of the year. Continue reading
Earlier this week, in a written statement to the House of Commons, the UK’s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Rt Hon Nicky Morgan MP, announced the end of the UK’s controversial age-verification plans for online porn Continue reading
The media was recently full of stories that Google had been “Fined $170 Million for Violating Children’s Privacy on YouTube” (that’s a headline from the New York Times; see also, for example, NPR | BBC | RTÉ | Silicon Republic). In this post, I want to sketch the legal background to, and consequences of, this fine; and, at the end, I will say a few words about the equivalent position in Europe. Continue reading
The Great Hack has just dropped on Netflix (IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes | wikipedia | poster left). It is a documentary that explores “how a data company named Cambridge Analytica came to symbolize the dark side of social media in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election”. Continue reading
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