“Next time you visit London,” we wrote about a year ago, “if you have an hour or two after visiting London Bridge, Westminster Palace and Big Ben, drop by a solicitor’s office and sue someone for libel. It will more than pay for the cost of your vacation. When you do, you’ll be participating in the blood sport known as libel tourism, a legal ploy so appalling that victims have described it as a form of terrorism.” (See Can’t Sue for Libel In US? Take Your Beef to Britain, Libel Capital of the World.)

Apparently Americans aren’t the only people bothered by this barbaric legal practice, which is founded on the presumption of guilt. Some 10,000 Britons signed petitions sponsored by reform groups urging the government to overturn the law.

Calling it “an archaic and unbalanced body of law,” the new coalition government picked up the groundswell of protest and has encouraged parliament to fix the statute. “Freedom of speech is the foundation of democracy,” said the government’s justice minister, “We need investigative journalism and scientific research to be able to flourish without the fear of unfounded, lengthy and costly defamation and libel cases being brought against them. We are committed to reforming the law on defamation and want to focus on ensuring that a right and a fair balance is struck between freedom of expression and the protection of reputation.”

Details in UK government plans major review of libel law

Richard Curtis

Can you be sued for posting a bad review? It not only happened in England, but triggered a delicious scandal as well, one involving a distinguished historian, his barrister wife, a couple of historian rivals, Josef Stalin and amazon.co.uk.

In the eye of the storm is historian Orlando Figes, who anonymously posted on amazon hatchet jobs on two books by historians working in the same academic discipline as Figes, modern Russian history.

He described one book as ”dense” and ”pretentious” and ”the sort of book that makes you wonder why it was ever published”. The other book he termed “awful.”  He did however heap praise on one book, The Whisperers: Private life in Stalin’s Russia. The author of The Whisperers was…himself.

As the identity of the hatchet-wielder began to focus on Figes, his wife – a barrister and Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge – initially claimed that she herself had written the reviews. As the spotlight shifted to Figes himself he started rattling the sword of litigation at the press and academic colleagues to scare them off the trail. The ploy did not work. Now he is not only dining on humble pie but will pay damages and costs to the author victims of his nasty reviews.

The question nags: what exactly did Figes do that was wrong? He was nasty, mean-spirited, petty, jealous, truculent and craven (he blamed his conduct on depression caused by “immersion in Stalin’s crimes while researching his book,” said one report). Now, we are not lawyers – solicitors as they call them in England – but as ugly as Figes’ transgressions are, none of them is illegal as far as we know.  Indeed, if all the malicious anonymous reviewers were sued for libel our court system would break under the weight of ligitation.

Obviously the laws in UK are different from America’s. We know this to be true in the matter of “libel tourism” about which we have written here. (See Can’t Sue for Libel in US?  Take Your Beef to Britain, Libel Capital of the World.) The issue seems to be anonymous malice (is there a lawyer in the house to help us out?) The charges can be inferred by the apologies he made to the authors and pledges that Figes made to the court: “He also gave an undertaking not to repeat the allegations, not to post pseudonymous reviews of their works, and not to use fraud, subterfuge or unlawful means to attack or damage [the authors] in their professional capacity.”

Whatever law was invoked, Figes was required to pay damages plus legal costs.

In the absence of a solid legal opinion we can only draw this moral from the shabby case of Orlando Figes: If you’re going to be malicious, do it under your real name.

For further details read Orlando Figes agrees to pay damages over negative Amazon reviews and The TLS, Orlando Figes and the law

Richard Curtis

Ben Parr of Mashable reports that “The United Kingdom parliament has passed the Digital Economy Bill, an extensive and controversial piece of legislation, by a vote of 189 to 47.”

“The legislation,” reports Parr, “encompasses online copyright infringement, Internet piracy, regulation of TV and radio, the classification of video games, regulations over ISPs, and a hodgepodge of other digital topics…Its goal is to clamp down on Internet piracy and illegal file-sharing.”

The bill received royal approval, meaning it’s now law of the land. That land, not this one. In this one file-sharing is the national pastime with not a glimmer of legislation on the horizon.

Last summer we had some harsh words for England because its laws made it easy to bring libel lawsuits against authors. (See Can’t Sue for Libel in US? Take Your Beef to Britain, Libel Capital of the World). But we wouldn’t mind seeing some Yank authors taking advantage of England’s new law and bring some pirates to their knees.

Richard Curtis

Last fall our piece about Britain’s outrageous libel laws (Can’t Sue for Libel in US? Take Your Beef to Britain, Libel Capital of the World) got a lot of attention, and perhaps some of the howls of horror it provoked were heard across the pond. “Embarrassed by London’s reputation as ‘a town called sue’ and by unusually stinging criticisms in American courts and legislatures,” writes New York Times‘s sarah Lyall, “British lawmakers are seriously considering rewriting England’s 19th-century libel laws.”

What the beef? “English libel law is the opposite of America’s in many ways,” says Lyall. “In the United States, the plaintiff, or accuser, must prove that the statement in question was false; public officials must also prove that it was made maliciously, with ‘reckless disregard’ for the truth.” Whereas in England, “the burden of proof rests on the defendant, whose statements are presumed false and who has to establish that they are true.”

As a result, authors and publishers have been intimidated from writing anything that might get them hauled into a British court. In one case a handful of copies of an American book made their way into England but that was enough to get the author sued. The costs alone can be ruinous, and damages? Don’t ask! “A protracted case could bankrupt an organization,” said one victim. “Even if a plaintiff is completely in the wrong, they could break you.”

Feel your blood boiling? There’s now hope: read Britain, Long a Libel Mecca, Reviews Laws by Sarah Lyall.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Next time you visit London, if you have an hour or two after visiting London Bridge, Westminster Palace and Big Ben, drop by a solicitor’s office and sue someone for libel. It will more than pay for the cost of your vacation.

When you do, you’ll be participating in the blood sport known as libel tourism, a legal ploy so appalling that victims have described it as a form of terrorism.

What’s it all about? “Unlike in the United States, where plaintiffs have to prove that the defendant’s statement is willfully false and defamatory,” writes Salil Tripathi in Wall Street Journal Europe, “the burden of proof is reversed in Britain. According to U.K. libel laws, the plaintiff has to show only that the statement harms his reputation — which is the case with almost any accusation, true or false. It is the defendant who must then prove that his allegations were not libelous.”

Because of this radical difference between the British (guilty until proven innocent) and American (innocent until proven guilty) approaches to libel, American authors and publishers and their lawyers have deliberately withheld UK publication rights to many books that might give offense to rich and/or powerful persons or entities that might bring a lawsuit in a British court. If you have any doubts that this is a sword hanging over the neck of every author and journalist, some examples will erase them. You can find them in Tripathi’s article or this one in the New York Times, Britain, a destination for “libel tourism” by Doreen Carvajal.

If you’re wondering why I’ve refrained from identifying the plaintiffs it’s because, frankly, I’m afraid of being sued. This blog is read worldwide and it’s all too likely that some litigious bastard who objects to being called – well, a litigious bastard – would take offense and haul me into a British court, tie me up for years and bankrupt me with legal bills (including the plaintiff’s) and damages.

So, you see, this cruel, stupid and toxic provision of English law has done its job on me, just as it will do on you should you venture over the line. And what does “venture over the line” mean? It means that if even a single copy of your US edition finds its way to English soil, you’re potentially liable.

Recently, two New York State officials proposed a bill that would render foreign libel judgments unenforceable “unless,” as it was reported, “the country in which they are made had free speech protections similar to the First Amendment.” And the New York Times ran an editorial supporting such a measure. “If authors believe they are too vulnerable,” the editorial concluded, “they may be discouraged from taking on difficult and important topics, like terrorism financing, or from writing about wealthy and litigious people. That would not only be bad for writers, it would be bad for everyone.”

The citizens of our nation have made terrible sacrifices, include the shedding of their blood, to defend our Constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech. That a foreign country, let alone the very one in which the foundations of democracy were forged, could have a license to reach into our homes and workplaces and deprive us of our most sacred right is intolerable and unconscionable. I wish I could say it is also unimaginable, but in fact this outrage is being perpetrated on our countrymen – on your fellow authors – as I write this. Every writer, agent and publisher organization must combat it. The British laws that foster this disgrace must be repealed. What is the Authors Guild, the American Publishers Association, the Association of Authors’ Representatives, the American Civil Liberties Union, PEN and other rights organizations doing about it?

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.