The writing is on the wall for restrictions on free speech

Is The Spectator like the owner of ‘a wall which has been festooned, overnight, with defamatory graffiti’? At its most thrilling this magazine does sometimes feel like that; but, in truth, the editorial hand here (though it may seem marvellously light to us contributors) is a quiet background presence protecting us and our potential victims from the publication of defamatory remarks. Not only would our editor do his best to chase away spray-painting hooligans before they did their work on his wall, but, should offending graffiti appear, he would come out fast with a brush, a bucket of whitewash and if necessary scaffolding: the equivalent of a published correction and apology. Or the law would do it for him: we could be sued. Such are the obligations of the publishers of a printed magazine, and they apply (to an extent as yet unclear in law) to its website, too.

They do not apply to Google, or, rather, to Google’s Blogger.com platform. In what may prove an important judgment last week, Mr Justice Eady found against a former Conservative council candidate, Mr Payam Tamiz, about whom some outrageously defamatory falsehoods had appeared on a blog, calling him a drug dealer and a thief. There was no shred of truth in any of this, and Mr Tamiz’s reputation could have been wrecked, but it now seems he has no remedy. His defamer (if he can be tracked down) is unlikely to be worth suing; that is why newspapers and magazines, being easier to sue, are expected to stand behind contributors and cannot simply wash their hands of what is submitted for publication.

But Google can do so, according to the judge. Echoing Google’s own submission, he accepted that their role was ‘a purely passive one’, like owning a wall, and ruled that Google’s facilitation of this blog did not amount to being its publisher, or even to having ‘authorised its publication’.

Perhaps your immediate sympathies, like mine, were with Tamiz; and then, after further thought, with the proprietors of traditional printed journals upon whom a much greater legal burden is placed.