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[1999] 4 All ER 432 (QBD). The claimant took out an action in defamation against the defendant Internet service provider, which he alleged had published an obscene article about him. The article in question was posted on a Usenet bulletin board. Although it was held on the defendant's news server, it had arrive by means of a Usenet news feed, and was therefore not under the direct control of the defendants in any meaningful sense. The claimant did notify the ISP of the message, but it was not removed until it was deleted by the news server's mechanism for purging old messages.
In its defence, the ISP claimed that it was protected by the `innocent dissemination' provisions of the DefamationAct1996. The trial judge agreed that this defence would have been successful, but for the fact that the defendants had actual notice of the publication.
The decision was not, as you may imagine, well received by ISPs. Usenet news servers often handle upwards of 2000 messages a day, and if the operator has to respond to every complaint it gets about the content of every message, this creates a great deal of work. An ISP cannot be expected to judge the potential for success of an action in defamation so, in practice, has no choice but to remove from its systems any publication that is the subject of any complaint.
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