Today, everybody using Twitter, Facebook, or an online Forum is a publisher. As such we need to start paying more attention to what we say online, particularly when talking about others. This January the Irish laws of Libel and Slander were dropped, replaced with a general law of Defamation. This we we spoke about the new law.

Darragh Doyle (homepage, twitter) of boards.ie joined us for the discussion. We first spoke of boards.ie’s recent attack, and then moved onto an interview with Marie McGonagle, who was involved in the reformation of the Defamation Act.

Marie spoke about new aspects of the law, and how old aspects have changed. She told us about warrant’s and what powers the Garda have under this new Act, where they can search and for what reasons. She spoke of the safe harbor of “Innocent Publication”, where an ISP or forum host does not have to act on content posted to it’s forum until they are alerted of it’s existence. Finally, she spoke of legal services that may be available to those who’s Freedom of expression is being infringed, specifically mentioning Digital Rights Ireland. Due to time constraints we could only include an excerpt of the full interview.

After the interview we had discussion with Darragh about Defamation and Freedom of Expression online. Boards.ie were also named as a defendant in a libel case in 2006, launched by MCD. Darragh mentioned how legal cases against online communities can have a chilling effect on discussion in those communities.

So, do you use a blog, or host a forum? Have you been thinking about the new laws and the effect they may have on your online presence or community? Drop us a comment and let us know.

The audio of this show is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (CC-BY-NC).

This show originally aired on Wednesday January 27^th on FlirtFM (101.3MHz, Galway) at 12:30pm.