Ray Saintonge said:
Still there would be questions about whether retaining the material in the archives would be continued publication. Edits are constantly being replaced, and removal from immediate access.
I don't know what WikiMedia's lawyers think of the fact that every single item in Wikipedia's archives are immediately available via URLs, and that each article on Wikipedia contains a link to the history which is a list of links to previous content. An interesting thing happened today. An article was listed for deletion, but at some point RickK marked it as a copyvio; the article seemed to be heading for a keep or no consensus. I disputed Rick's action because the article isn't a copy, and Rick pointed out that an earlier incarnation had been a copyvio. I still thought it was OTT, but now I'm thinking that copyvio is the right place, and that the correct action to take is that the article should be deleted and all but the copyvio versions restored.
The definition of publisher under the UK Defamation Act is also interesting.
It's extremely broad under that act. Basically if you cause or enable something defamatory to be transmitted to others in any way, shape or form, you're a publisher, but if you're an internet service provider you *probably* have a get-out unless and until you're made aware of the specific defamation.
The damages awarded in Godfrey v. Demon were £15,000. The legal costs awarded at £250,000 seem to be completely out of proportion to the damages, so I would be curious about the British procedure for taxing costs. Where does the USD 1,000,000 exageration come from?
The case never went to court; it was an out-of-court settlement, not an award. I misremembered the amount. The pre-trial phase of the case was a very hard-fought one so I don't think the costs sound particularly high in the circumstances. Godfrey is very persistent and confident in his ability to win cases, so he tends to put everything into them.
The defendants in this case were a UK company, so how this might have been reciprocally enforced against a US company did not arise.
See Godfrey versus Cornell University.