Godfrey v Demon Internet [1999] 4 All ER 342

• A post was made by a fraud on Defendant’s website that defamed Plaintiff. Plaintiff notified Defendant who did nothing.

• Plaintiff sued Defendant for defamation.

• Mr Justice Morland held that whenever Defendant transmitted the article from the storage of their news server, they -

Publish that posting to any subscriber to their ISP who accesses the newsgroup containing that posting. Thus every time one of Defendant’s customers sees that posting defamatory of the Plaintiff there is a publication to that customer.

• Even if Defendant was not a publisher within S.1 Defamation Act, the fact that they had notice of the post and chose not to remove it shows that they knew the statement was defamatory and therefore had no defence under s.1.