Blogger Back Online, Trumping Lawyers
Seemingly on the ropes after a Uzbekistan billionaire’s lawyers pressured his former Web host into taking down his site, an Internet critic is back online today in an ongoing Internet slugfest that has drawn worldwide attention to the way libel issues are handled in the blog world.
Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, is not only back online but was recruited by his new Web host, Safehost, after his former site, Fasthosts, “disappeared” his blog about two weeks ago, reports the International Herald Tribune. London lawyers for billionaire Alisher Usmanov had complained that Murray’s blog was misleading and damaging, the newspaper explains.
Fellow bloggers then rallied to support not only Murray but others whose unrelated sites reportedly were on the same server and hence also were taken down at the same time, says the Register, an IT blog.
Usmanov, whose net worth is estimated at 5 billion pounds, sparked controversy when he recently purchased a substantial interest in a United Kingdom soccer team, Arsenal, reports the London Times. Resulting publicity referred to the eight years he spent in prison in Moscow in the 1980s and prompted warnings from his lawyers to be careful. They demanded removal of at least one Murray post detailing allegations about Usmanov’s business and personal life. Usmanov insists he was a political prisoner and his lawyers say he was fully pardoned, the newspaper writes.
Internet service providers and Web hosts “are easy to strongarm on defamation because of the legal precedent set by Godfrey v. Demon Internet in 1999,” says the Register. “That case saw the ISP ordered to pay [15,000 pounds] in damages for not removing comments in a newsgroup.”
However, “that decision has since been garnished by the 2002 European E-commerce directive regulations that provide hosts and ISPs with protection from liability under some circumstances,” the blog continues. “It means hosts are in the clear provided they comply with lawyers’ demands promptly.”
A copy of the Demon Internet case is provided by Cyber Rights & Civil Liberties. Relevant material from the Electronic Commerce Regulations is identified by Nominet, a nonprofit that oversees the UK domain.
