Why is is so rare to read about government getting something *right?*
Thanks for the Post Amy. Good to know.

Smells like another victory for freedom of speech. Maybe it's just me but the US seems to return back to an image of freedom and hope lately...

But, the government hasn't gotten it right, yet. "The Senate failed to consider it, and it will have to wait until the next Congress is seated."

It is just freedom of speech, no need to hurry in the Senate.

>>As an author, this ability for people to bring suit in another country and then collect here really disgusts me.

There is possibly a tiny crumb of comfort for you while the law catches up, Amy.

Non UK resident litigants who want to avail themselves of libel tourism usually need very deep pockets.

IIRR, the British courts generally specifically require the non-UK party to make a substantial escrow deposit in advance to show they can meet the potential cost of a full libel hearing.

I agree this won't inhibit your Saudi billionaire. But it does weed out the possibly vexatious foreign Joe Blow who might think he only has to risk a lawyer's retainer to bag a libel windfall!

If ever there was a bill that liberals, social conservatives, and libertarians can all get behind, this ought to be it. Let's all pester the hell out of our Senators until this passes.

I wonder why GB hasn't seen fit to reform their libel laws? Is it because the House of Windsor likes it the way it is?

>>Is it because the House of Windsor likes it the way it is?

Cousin Dave,

That comment is not as daft as I first thought!

The Crown - when it used to have more than the strictly ceremonial/pop culture presence it does today - did indeed get very pissy historically with printed and circulated dissent. "Off with their heads" pissy!

Also the press in Britain does have a very long tradition of wonderfully scurrilous behavior - and it is still much ruder, on the whole, than the US press.

Nowadays, what the UK libel laws enshrine is the value of an individual's reputation above all. The litmus test becomes - "does this published statement lower the reputation of individual X in the eyes of a reasonable member of the public?".

The colloquial phrase used to be "the man on the top of the Clapham omnibus" - that is, a normal, modestly aware person - who is out and about in the world but not with special ties to the injured individual.

For journalists, however - it is not whether you write something technically libelous that gives you pause. It's whether your outrageous statement is true (and you can prove it to the court's satisfaction) or whether it is "fair comment" - based on what you non-maliciously had every reason to believe to be the truth.

Often a libel is proved - but the all-important damages reflect whether individual X had a reputation worth a damn in the first place! (So the individual might "win" a case - but end up not getting a cash award and/or being socked with the court costs anyway.)

Even this brief outline makes my head hurt - because of the caveats!

Basic rule - write what you want - but have an ironclad defense about its accuracy ready if you reckon it's going to cause trouble.

He is my congressman. We love him here.

Jody -

Basic rule - write what you want - but have an ironclad defense about its accuracy ready if you reckon it's going to cause trouble.

This is not necessarily going to help a guy like the one I am linking to (click my name). Basically, a "trade" organization threatened to sue him and his ISP. He is a blogger and documented clearly and precisely in the post that was under threat, that his piece was absolutely true. He had few worries about being sued, but his ISP demanded he pull the offending article.

After reading about this (and posting the offending article in full on my blog and writing the "trade" organization) I looked into this more and was horrified to discover that such threats have caused publishers to refuse to publish, pull articles, publicly apologize and/or force writers to publicly apologize for articles that are describing events that are absolutely true.

I am an unrepentant Anglophile, to be absolutely sure. I love a great many Brit authors, starting from when I was a small child (I still adore Micheal Bond, as does the six year old - even the eleven month old really). My fantasy vacation would require no less than five weeks in London alone, touring just the essentials would take months. But those fucking libel laws are absolutely insane and provide an all too easy vehicle for chilling free speech.

Not to mention, they make the UK look bad and provide fodder for folks to mock me for being such an anglophile....

>>Basic rule - write what you want - but have an ironclad defense about its accuracy ready if you reckon it's going to cause trouble.

This is not necessarily going to help a guy like the one I am linking to (click my name).

DuWayne,
Superb post & links.

But two things.

As you - and Orac - correctly noted, the "professional homeopathy" (splutter at the implicit oxymoron!) outfit did not actually bring a libel action. They gagged the published dissent by the threat of legal action.

So the critical "truth/fair comment" defense I so baldly outlined was not proved wanting in the crucible of an open hearing.

The principle remains intact.

Second, remember the Holocaust querying historian David Irving - Amy referred to this case above - famously lost his libel action. Again, the words Irving complained of were - basically - judged to be truthful and accurate. The cardinal defense worked.

Yet Irving's comeuppance had been a very, very long time coming. For years, I'd read his ghastly amateur apologists crowing - basically - if "our" guy is as full of shit as you "lying warty child-fiddling Commie Jew lovers etc etc" insist - why hasn't anyone proved it, huh?

It was frustrating.

Finally, someone did grasp that particular nettle. The admirable Lipstadt (and her publishers and lawyers.)

In my (lay) opinion - the homeopathic outfit actually - like Irving - has a very leaky case indeed.

So why didn't the defense risk a court case? If they could point out the article was true/fair comment and on a matter of public importance (another major libel defense principle)?

Sadly, I would imagine, because - as ever - it's much easier and cheaper to cave.

There is a "say uncle" aspect (hope I've got that US slang right!) when one side starts hurling lawyers' letters. Bloggers cannot cheaply avail themselves of a handy house lawyer to shoot back a tough-talking retort. Even newspapers and book publishers will not enter the legal fray lightly - they will wait until they've got all their ducks in a row (and stand to benefit from the publicity) before they'll invest funds to call a bully's bluff.

Newspaper clips libraries always circulate an in-house warning shit-list of chippy, rich individuals and orgnizations known to get heavy with legal threats the moment a staffer makes a potentially actionable comment in print. Yes, there is tons of trickle-down censorship as a result. (To go back to Cousin Dave's earlier comment for a moment - part of the reason the British press seems so feebly obsessed with royalty is that the blue bloods almost never react! Great non-risky copy fodder - and you can even allege the Queen is an alien!).

This is strictly my opinion, but I predict there will be a woo-woo medical charlatan libel case won for the sceptics before too long. (It might take a wealthy, tireless individual who sees a loved one at the mercy of the miracle cure wankers and who reckons it's time to bring their spurious, greedy claims to account, maybe. Or it might take a decent press campaign).

You are perfectly correct, DuWayne - that silencing critics through blowhard intimidation can be effective - and it stinks.

I'm not going to bore you about the role of the British Press Complaints Commission - though, briefly, this adjudicating outfit exists, in part, to referee libel rows without the usual crippling expense - when the "truth" principle is as stake and when both warring sides agree a public apology/retraction is wanted by their opponents - not money.

(Some people think the PCC is a toothless watchdog. I self-servingly disagree, because they won for me an apology in a David and Goliath libel beef I had against a national UK newspaper.)

So I guess I am saying - and should have said more briefly - the "truth" principle of the "fucking libel laws" is not yet six feet under. Though, yes, it often looks sickly (and it's even now being complicated by Euro Human Rights laws - a whole other box of snakes!)

Jody -

So the critical "truth/fair comment" defense I so baldly outlined was not proved wanting in the crucible of an open hearing.

But it is. While it can effectively work for people in court, all too often they never get to court. While eventually the cost would have to be paid by the plaintiff, publishers and especially individuals just don't want to deal with it at the front end and will do what they can to avoid the litigation.

DuWayne,

Actually, I have to disagree quite warmly.
Bloggers - yes, they don't have lawyers on tap and are therefore especially vulnerable -do, however, have a choice whether to expose themselves needlessly to threats of legal action for defamation.

They can probably benefit from learning how to frame strongly opinionated accusations (against a randomly litigious body like the homeopathic organization in the Orac article you cited) without their words being obviously - and provocatively -actionable.

Even with my rusty libel awareness, I can spot the specific wording in the now censored anti-homeopathy blog post that the writer should, maybe, have thought twice about using.

The fact that I personally 100% agree - and probably you do too - with almost every snarl of criticism about the current state of homeopathy regulations means nothing. The writer could have made the same angry points much less recklessly, in legal terms.

The reason the UK press - generally a lot punchier and irreverent than the US press, though there are exceptions - is not permanently gagged by a daily blizzard of court orders obtained by offended parties(though most papers deal with lawyers' threats daily) is because credentialed journalists are taught how to write "the truth" within the law.

In the case we're discussing, I deplore the bullying tactics used to shut up the blogger.

The bully tactics are already backfiring (on the homeopathy body) because they are being widely discussed. And the offending article is still available.

It is also being noted - with wonderful glee - by many bloggers that there are at least two major test cases about the dubious claims made by alternative medicine practitioners and involving credentialed journalists currently before the UK courts. These detailed, hard fought cases, in the end - are of greater service to "the truth" about quackery than bloggers who simply complain it's not fair they can't always write absolutely what they want - without penalty.

Until the libel laws in the UK are scrapped (yeah, right!) bloggers can do themselves a favor by sometimes writing on important topics a bit more smartly. (See Amy for samples!)