libel laws

There's this odd belief among some bloggers that defamation and libel laws don't actually apply to bloggers. Nothing could be further from the truth, however.

Some of the confusion may stem from court rulings about comment liability, suggesting that a blogger is not liable for defamatory statements made by others in their comments.

Unfortunately, many have taken this to mean that there is no liability for blogging defamatory statements.

UK libel law is incredibly strict. It's much stricter than in the US, which is why there have been a few cases over the years where someone tried to sue for libel in the UK despite the fact that the content had nothing to do with the UK.

Rob Hyndman writes in to let us know about yet another person trying to use libel laws to get content taken down that isn't libelous at all.

Apparently, the head of the Canadian postal service, Moya Greene, got upset at a satirical blog post on the blog of the postal workers' union making fun of Greene for joining the board of directors of Tim Hortons, the well-known doughnut shop.