Having a devious, scheming mind myself, I’ve often been known to speculatate about ulterior motives for legislation from this Government, often considering the unintended (or otherwise unnoticed) consequences.
Guido’s reminded me of something I wrote on the ‘Suing Bloggers’ story that hit the blogosphere a while ago. I had a slightly different take on the issue, because something about the plan struck me as more significant than the ability to sue bloggers:
Quote, “…we will also seek views on the abolition of criminal libel in respect of defamatory material”
Well that’s interesting, isn’t it? If libel can never be a criminal matter then doesn’t that mean that a politician with deep pockets for example, or politicians belonging to a party with deep pockets – could quite easily risk putting out a complete whopper during a General Election campaign, knowing that by the time it’s all cleared up there would only ever be a financial penalty, and the damage would have already been done?
Thanks, McBride. Thanks for encouraging and rewarding my paranoia. Just brilliant.
MatGB said...
25 Apr 09 at 11:18 pm
The idea of criminal libel even existing is a strange one to me, and I believe anomalous under common law judicial systems (ie English style). Printing something that’s not true about someone being a criminal offense just seems wrong.
Worth noting that none of this has actually happened in any way yet anyway.
Also? McBride was an arse, they never printed any of the stories, hell, they never even launched the blog, they were silly story ideas being knocked around by idiots who got carried away. Dorries is playing it for all she can get out of it, but for purely political reasons. To an extent, good, the more publicity she gets as a “leading Tory backbencher” the less chance they have of winning an overall majority.
The idea of her getting her hands on any real power is disquieting.
Ade said...
26 Apr 09 at 12:51 pm
Criminal libel assumes that you publish an untruth so bad that it amounts to breach of the peace. It is rarely used, and it doesn’t have a good record.
James Goldsmith (lots of money) tried to use it against Private Eye in the 70s, basically to give them a hard time. Roger Gleaves, a convicted sexual offender, took a private prosecution in 1980 against the authors of the book Johnny Go Home and forced them to prove his guilt a second time in court.
I think it is legitimate to look at scrapping criminal libel because it is most often used to try to stifle free speech.
Damian McBride is being sued by Nadine Dorris and has lost his job. Things are pretty bad for him without criminal libel.