On 11/09/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
There have been successful UK cases against Americans that would have failed in the US courts. The US has typically refused to honour any such decisions. Of course, people so affected travel to the UK at their own risk.
"Libel tourism" is a major failing of the UK court system; if you can show that the material was published *at all* in the UK, and that you have any standing *at all* in the UK which could potentially have been harmed by it, you have a potential case.
Neither the plaintiff or defendant has to be a UK citizen, or UK resident, or indeed have any significant UK connections. They just have to be able to show the defamation slipped into the UK somewhere - a dozen copies of an obscure book have been considered enough in the past. And UK law treats "publication" of online material as happening in the jurisdiction it is accessed in, not the one it was authored or hosted in. So the implications of this for defamation on the internet are... copious.
Once the court agrees to take it on, the plaintiff has a very easy time of it; defamation law here is very favourable to the putative victim. So you get quite a few of these cases, often with the defendant ignoring the case outright.