But given the seriousness of sorcery no person of goodwill would make such an unfounded allegation.

This is not the case. Historians of witchcraft now suggest that many accusations of witchcraft were the culmination of long disputes among neighbours, some lasting as long as twenty years. Belief that a person was really a witch was hardly a prerequisite.

So make sure that lelandii of yours is trimmed back.

mettaculture: I agree with your proposals for reform regarding ISPs. They are currently in an inviduous position as you know, under the Defamation Act as interpreted by Godfrey v Demon. On the one hand to qualify as a mere conduit, the ISP has to be completely hands off, but on the other,the interpretation has deteriorated into the received wisdom that the moment an aggrieved person informs the ISP of the allegedly defamatory material, the ISP is in breach of the obligation to “take reasonable care in relation of its publication, etc, unless he takes it down at once. , This has to be challenged.

Anthony Julius apparently said:
“The papers can afford to fight; celebrity cases are fought for huge fees.”

With what evidence? Which broadsheets make a profit? Which red tops make a profit? If you add up daily sales in either category, the losers outnumber or roughly equal the winners. Why would a vanity publisher of a national newspaper (ie most of them) risk a confrontation and financial loss in the courts?

Ami wrote about another: “Paul Tweed, a Northern Ireland lawyer who acts for many celebrities in libel actions, said the main reason Ehrenfeld didn’t defend was the risk of costs, but if she believed she was right, she would have got her costs if she won.”

But as the oft quoted Sonia Sutcliffe vs Private Eye case demonstrates, courts may be perverse in their judgement. [The following argument does not apply to the Sutcliffe case.] Five paragraphs of damning evidence in a book may be offset in the jurors’ eyes by a minor slip on the next page. In UK English grammar, a misplaced apostrophe is sufficient to provide two meanings to a sentence. Libel juries are a gamble for the claimant and defendent. Consequently, UK libel law serves neither party, but provides a healthy income to some lawyers.

This scenario repeated itself recently when the chief of the Metro Police crashed his car while drunk while returning from a function. His solution was to get his minders to threaten all witnesses, including apparently the rank-and-file police officers who arrived to investate. He was in good company though, not long afterwards a Supreme Court Judge was captured on a mobile phone video in a drunken rant after crashing his luxury car into someone’s garden wall.