Nieman Foundation at Harvard
HOME
          
LATEST STORY
A year in, The Guardian’s European edition contributes 15% of the publisher’s pageviews
ABOUT                    SUBSCRIBE
March 17, 2011, 10 a.m.

The Duke of Brunswick and the net: The far reaches of British libel law

Editor’s Note: Our sister publication Nieman Reports is out with its spring issue, which spotlights the efforts of reporters trying to uncover corruption. We’re highlighting a few entries that connect with subjects we follow in the Lab, but go read the whole issue. In this piece, Jonathan Seitz writes about the British libel law that has gained unexpected reach in the Internet age.

Germany’s Duke of Brunswick was an overweight, autocratic paranoiac who was kicked out of his fiefdom by a peasant uprising.

A statement like that might be the reason why the United Kingdom has come to be considered the libel capital of the world. While living in exile in Paris in 1848, the Duke became one of the U.K.’s first libel tourists when he sent his manservant across the channel to purchase a copy of the September 19, 1830 Weekly Dispatch, which he believed contained defamatory statements against him. The exact details of what was written have been lost to history, but the court ruled that the words were libelous enough to award a judgment. More important was the finding that the mere purchase of a copy of the newspaper constituted a new publication and a new act of libel; this essentially nullified the six-year statute of limitations.

The Duke of Brunswick ruling — formally known as the “multiple publication” rule — still stands. Brought into the Internet era, it means that if an article is viewed even once in the U.K., it falls under its jurisdiction for a libel suit.

Keep reading »

POSTED     March 17, 2011, 10 a.m.
Show tags
 
Join the 60,000 who get the freshest future-of-journalism news in our daily email.
A year in, The Guardian’s European edition contributes 15% of the publisher’s pageviews
After the launch of Guardian Europe, one-time donations from European readers increased by 45%.
Press Forward awards $20 million to 205 small local newsrooms
In response to the volume and quality of applications, Press Forward doubled the funding and number of grantees for this open call.
Midwestern news nonprofit The Beacon shuts down its Wichita newsroom
“We’ve realized that we can’t do it all, and have made the decision to no longer have a staffed newsroom in Wichita.”