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A successful application for a “Newzbin 2” blocking injunction against a football streaming website known as FirstRow Sports, which was found to facilitate copyright-infringing activities. For details, see the CIS Blog Post.

Section 5 of the Act sets out a new defence from liability in defamation, for the benefit of website operators. By virtue of this provision, such intermediaries are exempt from liability for defamatory statements uploaded onto their websites by the websites’ users. However, this defence can be overcome if the claimant proves: that it was not possible for the claimant to identify the person who posted the statement, that the claimant gave the operator a notice of complaint in relation to the statement, and that the operator failed to respond to the notice of complaint in accordance with any provision contained in regulations which are to be established under section 5(5) of the Act. See more at Wikipedia

The claimant in those proceedings complained about the defamatory comments posted on a blog hosted on Blogger.com, a website operated by Google. It was held that once Google is notified of the defamatory comments on Blogger and fails to remove them within a reasonable time, it might incur liability as the “secondary” publisher of said content. Regarding the defence set out in s. 1 of the Defamation Act 1996 (see above), it was held that Google could not be regarded as the publisher of the comments within the meaning of s. 1(2), and while the company was found to have taken reasonable care with regards to the publication of the statement, it could be denied the defence due to the finding that it knew or should have known that its activity is likely to prolong the publication of the defamatory material. However, the s. 1...