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1. Godfrey vs.
Demon Internet Service
[2001] QB 201

2. Facts of the Case
• Laurence Godfrey, a physics lecturer, found that someone had posted
a message to the Usenet discussion group soc.culture.thai. That
message, sent by an unknown source, had been forged to appear to
have been sent by Dr. Godfrey. On January 17, 1997, Godfrey
contacted Demon Internet, one of the major Internet Service
Providers in The UK to inform them of the forged message and ask
that it be deleted from Demon Internet's Usenet news server. Demon
Internet declined to remove the message, which remained on its
servers for ten additional days, at which time it was automatically
deleted along with all other old messages. Godfrey sued for
defamation, citing Demon's failure to remove the forged message at
the time of his initial complaint.

3. Laws Applicable
• Section 1 (Responsibility for Publication) of the Defamation
Act 1996
“In defamation proceedings a person has a defence if he shows
that-
(a) he was not the author, editor or publisher of the statement
complained of,
(b) he took reasonable care in relation to its publication, and
(c) he did not know, and had no reason to believe, that what he
did caused or contributed to the publication of a defamatory
statement.”

4. For this purpose......."publisher" have the following
meanings
(A) "publisher" means a commercial publisher, that is, a
person whose business is issuing material to the public, or
a section of the public, who issues material containing the
statement in the course of that business."
(B) A person shall not be considered the author, editor or
publisher of a statement if he is only involved-
(a) in printing, producing, distributing or selling printed
material containing the statement,
(b) in processing, making copies of, distributing or selling
any electronic medium in or on which the statement is
recorded, or in operating or providing any equipment,
system or service by means of which the statement is
retrieved, copied, distributed or made available in
electronic form

5. Issue
• Whether the defendant ISP is liable under Defamation
Act, 1996 as a publisher.

6. Judgment
• The Court observed that when an ISP has been put on notice and has knowledge of a
defamatory act, it becomes liable for the defamatory statement under Defamation Act,
1996 . As soon as it has knowledge of the defamatory statement, the ISP’s liability is
engaged and it must take the defamatory statement down in order to escape liability.
• The court decided that an ISP could not avail itself of this defence where its service
carried a defamatory message from an unknown third party. The complaint related not
to the initial publication and transmission of the message, but the ISP's failure to
remove the message once its false and defamatory nature had been made known to it.
The judge held that the ISP had not taken reasonable care and therefore contributed to
its continuing publication.

7. • The defamatory posting was not removed as requested but remained
available on the demon internet news server until its expiry on about
27, January, 1997.
• Ruling on a pre-trial motion, the court found that an Internet service
provider can be sued for defamation, and that any transmission by a
service provider of a defamatory posting constituted a publication
under defamation law. Demon thereafter entered into an out-of-court
settlement that paid Godfrey £15,000 plus £250,000 for his legal
expenses.

8. Analysis of the decision
• Godfrey v. Demon Internet case involves the first judicial
decision within England and Wales which concerns a
defamatory statement made via e-mail through an internet
UseNet discussion group.
• The case is also the first one to take into account the
liability of an ISP under section 1 of Defamation Act, 1996.

9. • According to this judgment, authors are not the only parties
who may be liable for defamation. Website owner and ISPs
may also be held responsible for user-generated content
appearing on their sites.
• In my view, there should be the right balance between the
rights of free speech and reputation, so that hosts can have
clear legal protection in relation to user generated content
without having to opt to take so much content down.