Mark Stephen’s article in The Times last week that was commented upon by me here, has provoked responses from the claimant in the libel proceedings, Mike Keith-Smith and a Times reader Kristen Roy, which were published in The Times today.

I republish their correspondence here: -

"Sir,

 

As the successful claimant in Keith-Smith v Williams, I strongly object to Mark Stephens’s assertion that the decision by Judge Alistair MacDuff, QC, marks “a dark day for freedom of speech” (news comment, Mar 22).

 

Since when did the right to free speech imply the right of an anonymous malefactor to engage in a long-term campaign of vile and obscene abuse against an innocent individual? This disgusting conduct is not “the democratisation of knowledge”. A far better analogy would lie with the facility, common in Nazi Germany and other totalitarian dictatorships, for malicious individuals to bear false witness against their neighbours from behind a cloak of secrecy.

 

If I have made a stand that in any way assists in the plight of other victims of internet abuse – and I know that they are legion – then I am very proud to have done so."

 

Mark Keith-Smith

and,

"Sir,

 

The High Court ruling in the case of Keith-Smith v Williams demonstrates the application of common sense to legal treatment of speech over the internet.

 

The internet is a technologically unprecedented medium and certainly presents conceptual difficulties for the law where jurisdictional questions arise. However, there is little justification for creating a new set of libel laws for the World Wide Web or, rather, taking them away altogether. A libellous allegation remains exactly that, whether read from a paper in hand or on a screen before the eyes.

 

Are people really so adept at distinguishing “ranters” on the internet from those making viable claims? Should we be? And, if we are, then why are we deemed unable to make these distinctions when the claim appears in hard copy?

 

The characteristic of the internet which sets it apart from others is quite simply its potential for dissemination at mind-boggling speeds, in mind-boggling volumes. The internet is a legitimate mode of communication and to place it in a legal vacuum undermines the very real place it now occupies in today’s society."

 

Kristen Roy

Let me start by saying that I do not think the opinions they profess are either misguided or wrong.  I just do not agree.  I have a different perspective.

Mr Keith-Smith has a political persona to protect.  The palpably false insults made by his nemesis, an obviously malicious woman, could have been used by unscrupulous opponents who were willing to smear his good name behind the scenes, though I am unconvinced of the likely success of this tactic on the part of such miscreants.

As I have already said in my earlier post on the subject, the danger of litigating against small time "slanderers" is that the legal action publishes the libel to a larger audience that will contain even more people who will believe, irrationally, that the falsehoods are true, because for one reason or another they need to believe they are true.

In some cases (though clearly not in the instant case) a libel action is used as a gagging device to suppress a truth (Liberace, Jeffrey Archer.) This is not lost on the public. Thus very often, only the most popular litigants of uncontroversial occupations or pursuits truly escape unscathed.  So often, even successful libel actions do not have the desired result.

I fear this victory is likely to give succour to those who wish to silence critics on the net.  Bloggers have a limited audience and their shelf life is relatively short.  A blogger or owner of a website who is clearly bitter and twisted about something will lose an audience fast and nothing they say will carry any weight, anyway. We are not discussing mass audience newspapers or television media whose utterances have far more weight (and thereby cause more damage) because they try to verify their facts and have lawyers to ensure that so far as is possible, there is not any overstepping of the mark. Only a handful of blogs have a very large audience and the reason for their popularity is that they are amongst other things, interesting, authoritative in their chosen subject and in the main avoid gratuitous offence.

It is the possibility of gagging actions that most bloggers could not hope to afford to defend, which bothers me.  Pitfalls for the claimants, do not.  If they wish to risk doing a Gillian Taylforth, then so be it.