Millennie Al wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 3:45 am
If a statement is published about someone in England, then that person is entitled under libel law to take action in teh English courts. If you don;t like that, then you should support abolishing libel.
I believe we should have defamation laws in Britain. But I don't assent unconditionally to your description, because it is so much about where you draw the lines. It is not a yes/no question. It is a matter of degree, a very important matter of degree.
When should someone have standing to sue for libel in England? When is it published "sufficiently" in Britain, as opposed to somewhere else? A very important related point is where does that person's reputation lie, substantially, that has been damaged by this publication, that this is the suitable jurisdiction to be protecting it? Because in practical reality practically everything you publish these days is available to the world, or that part of the world with a sufficiently free media. Most other libel courts are much stricter on the matter of standing, so that the case is addressed in a suitable jurisdiction, not just the jurisdiction that one party hopes will be most helpful to them.
If someone publishes a statement on a Russian media site, and a dozen computers with GB IP addresses have apparently downloaded it, then has it been published in in GB enough for you to sue in the English courts? (Let's put complications about Scotland to one side.) In the bad old days, when libel was even more plaintiff-friendly than today, that situation was enough for various rich foreigners to sue for libel in England. It had apparently been read by a few people in England. Therefore it was published in England. Therefore you could sue in England. Even though it was published in Russian, on a website whose main audience was Russia and/or Russian-speaking people in the FSU. And the damaged individual's main economic standing was in Russia. They wouldn't have been able to sue for libel in most other countries, just because it had been downloaded a few times there. Because that interpretation by the English court was a very extreme position, not taken in most places.
The other issue is whether the plaintiff has much of a reputation established in that country, and which has been damaged by that publication. A lot of countries will look at the plaintiff's standing in that jurisdiction, and consider whether this really is the right jurisdiction to be addressing the case, considering where the economic damage of the defamation might occur, in that jurisdiction. US states do that too, because in principle when something is published in the US it can be read anywhere in the US. But you have to choose your jurisdiction to sue, they won't let you sue 50 times in 50 states. States will only let you sue if they consider it has enough connection to that state, as opposed to others. So, for example, when US chess player, resident in California, Hans Niemann sued world champion Hans Carlsen, a Norwegian, for defamation in relation to cheating allegations, he sued in Missouri. Missouri is the location of the tournament where Carlsen resigned at move 2, and subsequently explained this as refusing to play against cheaters. The first issue in the case was, did the case have standing in Missouri? The first action in the case was the judge - not the defendants, the judge - asking Niemann's lawyers to justify that they had standing to sue in Missouri. Commentators suggested that was far from obvious they did. Since the case proceeded to a further stage, where the defendants asked for it to be struck out on various other grounds, I guess Niemann passed the court standing test.
People still come to Britain to sue for libel, because we have the reputation as the jurisdiction most friendly to libel plaintiffs, among countries with reasonably independent courts. It is not a good reputation for Britain to have. We are still far too willing to let people sue in Britain with only limited connection to Britain, and in relation to publications that are only peripherally read in Britain.
The other key point in libel jurisdiction is when is something just an opinion you might have, or just insult, as opposed to asserting something as fact. In the UK, you are allowed to express opinions, and insults, so long as they are "reasonable" opinions, and reasonably recognisable as opinions or insults. The US is much more willing to allow statements to be interpreted as opinions and insults. Vernon Unsworth unsuccessfully sued Elon Musk, who called him a "pedo guy", when rescuing youths trapped in a cave in Thailand. The court accepted this was just invective.
The main winners in libel cases, as in much else in the law, are the lawyers. I would suspect that earnings by lawyers is the main reason that the government doesn't clamp down on libel actions, even to bring us in line with other reasonably civilised places on the continent. Some large fraction of the house of commons are lawyers, and are probably well-connected to the lawyers who make all the money from this.