The Law Commissioner doesn’t know the law
The Law Commissioner thinks that by removing actual blog-posts which reproduce comments he received, he is safe (he removed them last night). He is not.
Everything was printed out and proceedings will carry on as planned.
Whether the blog-posts were removed or not is irrelevant in the eyes of the law. What is relevant is that they were published in the first place.
Newspapers are thrown away after just a day, but it doesn’t follow that it is legal to libel people in them. Rather the opposite, in fact.
The Law Commissioner also appears to be tragically uninformed – given that he is both the man responsible for law reform and an internet publisher – about the obligations at law of a publisher, or the legal definition of ‘publisher’ and ‘publication’.
As the person responsible for the blog which carries his name, he is the legal publisher and the person accountable at law for the comments published on it, whether they are published anonymously or not.
If he receives libellous comments and uploads them (which constitutes publication at law) he, as well as the person who wrote the comment, commits the act of libel, and he is liable at law.
That is why the comment moderation facility exists on certain internet sites (like this one, like his, and like those of the more reputable newspapers), holding back comments until the blog/website administrator can check them for libel and similar before uploading them.
The blog-posts which Franco Debono removed last night reproduced comments he received and which are still right there on the various threads beneath other posts. Besides these particular ones, many other comments in those threads are seriously libellous, and there will be proceedings accordingly.
The law allows me to file separate civil suits against the Law Commissioner for each libellous comment as they are distinct from each other (this is the same as filing separate civil suits for different libellous articles in the same newspaper), i.e. if there are 20 libellous comments (there are actually more), I can file 20 civil suits against the Law Commissioner. I am considering this option.
The law also allows me to sue both the publisher and the writer – that means both the Law Commissioner and any person I discover to be the writer of libellous comments.
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Unfortunately libel proceedings are held in public. That means that the person who is slandered is slandered even more in the media when reporters “report” the court proceedings where invariably the technical details are read out.
I’m not in your position so I don’t know, but can perhaps imagine, the frustration one feels when lies are spread about him/her. However I think that I would have simply ignored the posts. As it is they may have been inadvertently highlighted even more.
[Daphne – You must be joking.]
No. It’s just what I think. Blog posts get stale very quickly. I may be wrong of course.
[Daphne – Yes, you are wrong. I am not one to sue for libel or file police reports. Consider the fact that I have been systematically slandered by the Labour Party and its supporters for more than two decades now. But there are limits, and the Law Commissioner is the Law Commissioner, not just another human turd on Facebook.]
Yes, let’s behave like guilty parties in all we do.
The vote, work, life in general, let’s just slug it, futile trying anything on this rock.
Let them become the benevolent master who’ll forgive and give us ‘second chances’.
Depression made plebiscite.
This is not even about libel. This is about spelling out to the holders of public office that even they are accountable at law for libel and slander, and that holders of public office should not go to war with those exercising their legal right/obligation to criticise them or mock them.
A holder of public office assaults a journalist from a position of real power. The reverse is not so.
Besides, those who hold public office must uphold the repute of that office. They can’t go about behaving so tackily.
Also, and more importantly in my opinion, they need to be made to understand that they MUST be scrutinised by the free press. This is one of the roles of the press.
We cannot go on like this where people are afraid to speak out against holders of public office for fear of recrimination. People need to see that they have both the right and the duty to hold public officers to account.
Go for it, Daphne. Things have gone much too far already.
Yes, go for it – you have all the right to do so, and you should.
Tghid sab kapell jigieh fl-ahhar?
That’s the spirit, although I am more than sure that the machine oiled by the local stupid system will find some loophole for Debono.
20 libel suits? Geez, you’re going to ‘hoover’ his entire salary from the office of the Law Commissioner for a year.
Ok, the cock has chickened out.
She’s giving you law lessons, Frankie. It’s about time you learnt something.
Hekk il-gustizzja. Prosit.
Dear Franco, don’t you know the Latin saying “Verbum volat, scriptum manet”?
You might have got away spreading pernicious rumours verbally. Putting them down in writing is a whole other matter.
[Daphne – Spreading pernicious rumours is also a criminal act, as is lying about a person verbally.]
Verba volant, scripta manent.
I feel like a downright arse having supposedly checked the spelling (given that I never studied Latin) only to end up bastardising it.
It’s either too many things on my mind to even process the results of a basic internet search or this Malta Taghna Lkoll spelling bug is really catchy.
Thanks for the correction, Baxxter. It has been duly noted.
I can still hear the voice of Horatio Vella quoting Ovid.
[Daphne – One of the most trying years of my life, and that’s saying a great deal.]
His descriptions of the vast orgies of Heliogabalus was probably what set me off on the road to decadence. Oh well, can’t be helped now.
The spreading of a ‘pernicious rumour’ is not a criminal act. Lying about a person is an offence if it amounts to calumny. What constitutes a criminal offence is defaming an individual with intent of some form gain.
Then there is libel under the Press Act – yet while all libel is a in fact a pernicious rumour, not all rumours of this ilk are necessarily libellous.
[Daphne – Spreading pernicious rumours is also a criminal act, as is lying about a person verbally.]
Maybe my point was not clear – of course pernicious rumours whether spoken or written are subject to criminal proceedings.
The only difference is that verbal rumours tends to boil down to a case of “he said, she said”. However, putting the same rumours down in writing under your name is something that is much harder for anyone to worm his way out of.
This makes your case against Franco and anyone else promulgating these rumours so much stronger.
[Daphne – Yes, I understand that. But all you need to prove the spreading of rumours is the testimony of one or two people to whom those rumours have been told.]
I am sorry Osservatore but you are mistaken.
Does it not fall under the definition of libel and slander, which in turn can be tried under both civil and criminal courts?
I ran a quick search and I found a relevant article – actually rather relevant to the facebook issue, but in the last paragraph it confirms the above.
http://www.sundaycircle.com/2011/10/ask-the-experts-facebook-libel/
The Law Commissioner also forgot that Google Cache exists.
20 civil suits you say ?… save your money and file one in the UK, libel damages can be awarded worldwide when such comments are floated on the net. That should make him crap in his pants.
Franco Debono is a disgrace to the role of Law Commissioner.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Franco-Debono-is-a-disgrace-to-the-role-of-Law-Commissioner/504221409636608?ref=tn_tnmn