Mumsnet and Gina Ford settle online libel row
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 9 May 2007 at 12:40
Tags: Mumsnet
A legal dispute that has been carefully watched by journalists who maintain web sites community message boards has been settled out of court.
Controversial parenting guru Gina Ford has settled her dispute with parenting web site Mumsnet, dropping the libel action she had threatened last summer.
The terms of the settlement are confidential, but according to in a statement on the site, Mumsnet apologises to Gina Ford, and Ford has agreed not to pursue a libel action that her solicitors had threatened the site. Mumsnet has also “made a contribution to Gina Ford’s legal costs”.
Last summer, Ford had threatened a libel action against Musmsnet and its hosting service, DCS Ltd, after users posted disparaging remarks about her on the forum site. One comment, left on Mumsnet around the time of last summer’s Middle East conflict, suggested Ford “straps babies to rockets and fires them into south Lebanon”.
The case raised the ever-sticky issues about who is liable for comments made by users of online communities.
Under the Defamation Act 1996, an internet service has a defense of innocent dissemination if the content of the forum is not under their control. Nevertheless, most large community sites use proactive moderation (or pre-moderation) to vet each comment before it is published.
However, proactive moderation is expensive and is not a viable option for sites operarting on a shoestring. It was feared that this case could lead to a situation where people able to mount libel actions could effectively silence discussion on small forum web sites.
At the time, Mumsnet referred to the current legal situation as an “antediluvian set of laws that have failed to catch up with the reality of communication on the internet”, and their lawyer, Mark Stephens, spoke out on the need to change the law to protect sites like Mumsnet.
Online forum libel is one of the new media law issues that may have to be included in new NCTJ law exams.
Tags: Mumsnet
