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erned is in some way made aware of the existence of a defamatory post, then the availability of the innocent dissemination defence to them will be automatically disabled.

Returning to the case of Godfrey, the fact that Demon received notice in relation to the defamatory posting, along with Demon’s subsequent failure to take reasonable care in relation to the defamatory statement, that is to take it down from the board, gave rise to liability [17] . It can therefore be concluded, that the crucial point of reasoning of the decision lies upon the extent of awareness of the ISP as to the defamatory statement. According to the Godfrey court, after the ISP defendant had been put on notice and failed to take down the libellous content, it indisputably ‘caused or contributed to the publication of a defamatory statement’ [18] .

More disputably, some academic writers [19] argue that Godfrey implied that the duty conferred to ISPs to exercise ‘reasonable care’ as regards defamatory statement goes beyond the responsibility to take down posts upon notice. According to Ludbrook, in Godfrey, what the claimant was trying to establish was that Demon was liable in relation to the defamatory material even before notice took place [20] . In this sense, if the ISP defendant is aware that a subscriber is a regular malicious publisher of defamatory content, then the defendant will fail to exercise reasonable care within the meaning of 1996 Act by enabling such party as a client at the first place and therefore is liable for publication even without being put on notice of the existence of the statement [21] . If such an assumption as to the meaning of ‘reasonable care’ is true, then there is great danger that ISPs will be charged with onerous responsibilities and the situations where they will be able to make use of the innocent dissemination defence will be substantially rare.

In 2002, the European Commission formed the E-commerce Directive, which lays down a number of limitations on the liability of ISPs, aiming to ensure the free flow of information via electronic communication throughout the European Community [22] . In particular Article 14 provides that an ISPs is not liable for the publication of a defamatory statement, so far he does not have actual knowledge of illegal activity or information and, as regards claims for damages, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which the illegal activity or information is apparent. By the time a service provider obtains such information, they will not be able to avail themselves of a defense unless they can demonstrate that they acted “expeditiously to remove or to disable access to the information” [23] .

However, by any standards, the ambit of Article 14 is very narrow indeed and its enforcement did not make any sensible difference as to the protection of the ISPs. Its effect can be demonstrated in the 2006 case of Bunt v Tilley [24] . Again in this case, the claimant sued Tilley, the ISP for damages in respect of a defamatory statement posted on their online bulletin board. However, in this ca本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。