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There isn't much difference between the USA and Australia in the way
we handle lawsuits for libel, but if you accept the idea that the person
most likely to be offended by your speech should have legal
jurisdiction, then you would have no more freedom of speech than
what is allowed by the most restrictive nation on Earth,
regardless of where you reside
...Unless your own government insists on defending the rights of its
citizens by rebuffing such foreign claims of jurisdiction,
even from normally reasonable and friendly nations
:cool:
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Bluebeard to be totally honest I think we are going to have to await the outcome of the trial and all the legal hagglings before anyone can answer that. This is certainly going to cause a few people to stop and think, for the moment anyway.
Depending on the outcome, the lawmakers on both sides of the ocean may be revisiting the law books.
I believe this was a subscriber site so the owner of the site would have or could be reasonably expected to have known where the target audience was.
I will see if I can find a copy of the recent court ruling and throw up the link.
OK people, anyone intertested in wading through the transcript of the hearing in the Australian High Court Dow Jones & Company Inc -v- Gutnick here is the link.
It is dates the 28 May 2002, this appears to have been bouncing around the courts for sometime , I guess the final ruling has made a bit of a splash about the place.
I see Dow Jones has retained the services of Geoffery Robertson QC ... they could do worse :)
Another interesting article is here written by Michael S. Overing who teaches Internet Law at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. He is a practicing attorney in Los Angeles County, California.
