GW ePublishing

In the U.S., public figures have to prove that statements about them are false and made with malice -- but in Britain a statement that harms one's reputation is enough to justify a libel action. Defendants must prove that statements are true or "fair comment." This has a chilling effect on the reporting of damaging facts.

"If information cannot be freely exchanged, if journalists must fear being sued over information reported in good faith on matters crucial to our defense, matters such as the financial networks supporting jihadist terror, then we cannot make sound security policy," former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said at a recent conference on "libel lawfare." This is a useful term to describe lawsuits to suppress facts about radical Islam and terrorism.

The Web means that publishing anywhere means publishing everywhere, thus subjecting authors and publishers to litigation in pro-plaintiff jurisdictions

hree centuries ago, John Locke agreed that we shouldn't base our freedom to read books on the proclaimed good offices of the business itself. "Books seem to me to be pestilent things," he wrote in 1704, "and infect all that trade in them...with something very perverse and brutal. Printers, binders, sellers, and others that make a trade and gain out of them have universally so odd a turn and corruption of mind, that they have a way of dealing peculiar to themselves, and not conformed to the good of society, and that general fairness that cements mankind."