Eoin – Page 105 – cearta.ie

From today’s Irish Times:

Press Council seminar on privacy

The Press Council is hosting a seminar on the relationship between the press, the internet and privacy at Jury’s Western Hotel in Cork on Friday.

Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes, businessman Ben Dunne and Irish Daily Mirror editor John Kierans are among the speakers at the seminar, which hopes to generate an exchange of views between members of the media and the public.

The seminar, which is free and open to the public, begins at 2pm.

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SI No 511 of 2009: Rules of the Superior Courts (Defamation) 2009

11 January, 201024 October, 2011

| 1 Comment

| Defamation, Defamation Act 2009, Multiple publication

One of the reasons for delaying the coming into effect of the Defamation Act, 2009 from 23 July 2009 when it was signed by the President until 1 January 2010 was the need to amend the Rules of the Superior Court to provide for the changes to practice and procedure which it requires. Those changes are effected by SI No 511 of 2009: Rules of the Superior Courts (Defamation) 2009 (pdf). It inserts a new Order 1B in, and amend Order 22, Order 36 and Appendix B, Part II of the Rules of the Superior Court) to facilitate the operation of the Defamation Act, 2009. In particular, it makes provision for

verifying affidavits under section 8,
the procedures relating to various applications under sections 11 (multiple publication), 14 (meaning), 33 (prohibition order), and 34 (summary application), and under section 11(2)(c) of the Statute of Limitations 1957 (as amended by section 38),
applications under section 23 relating to offers of amends,
notification of evidence of apology under section 24, and
particulars of evidence in mitigation (amending Order 22 RSC).

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65% would remove blasphemy crime from the Constitution

8 January, 2010

| 3 Comments

| Blasphemy, Freedom of Expression

In an earlier post, I suggested a wording for a complete revision of Article 40.6.1(i) of the Constitution. That makes a recent Irish Times poll very interesting:

65% would support a referendum to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Constitution. So, how about it, Minister?…

No UKSC Christmas Present for Vodafone

5 January, 20103 January, 2010

| No Comments

| Restitution

Cases dealing with the consequences of the European Court of Justice, striking down national tax provisions as inconsistent with EU law, just seem to keep on coming. In C-196/04 Cadbury Schweppes v Commissioners of Inland Revenue [2006] ECR I-7995 [2006] EUECJ C-196/04 (12 September 2006) the ECJ called the Controlled Foreign Companies taxation provisions of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988 into question, having regard to EU law. Important restitution questions would then have arisen. However, in Vodafone 2 v HM Revenue & Customs [2009] EWCA Civ 446 (22 May 2009) the Court of Appeal (reversing the High Court [2008] EWHC 1569 (Ch) (04 July 2008)) nevertheless concluded that the provisions were susceptible to an interpretation conforming with EU law. The question now to be decided by the Tax Tribunal is therefore whether the vodafone arrangment is within that interpretation on the facts. But this appears to be the end of the line so far as the law is concerned. Just before Christmas, the UKSC blog reported that the UK Supreme Court declined to give Vodafone a Christmas present of leave to appeal against the Court of Appeal’s decision:

It was widely expected that this case would be heard by the Supreme Court.

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Blasphemous rumours and constitutional amendments

4 January, 20104 January, 2010

| 11 Comments

| Blasphemy, Freedom of Expression

The free speech guarantee in Article 40.6.1(i) of the Constitution is a fragile freedom, much to the inglorious discredit of Irish democracy. However, there is a slim chance that the controversy over the blasphemy provisions in Part 5 of the newly-commenced Defamation Act, 2009 might provide an opportunity to replace the current text of Article 40.6.1(i) with something rather more robust. Consequently, much more in hope than expectation, this post concludes with a suggestion for a replacement text, on which I would welcome any comments and suggestions.

But first, the context. The blasphemy provisions in the 2009 Act are provoking quite a bit of commentary in the media, both in Ireland (Sunday Independent | Sunday Tribune | Irish Times here and here | Sunday TImes) and abroad (BBC | CNN | Guardian | MSNBC | New York Daily News | Sydney Morning Herald | Washington Post). Even the Drudge Report has commented on the story; and there are more here). I particularly like the Post piece, because I’m quoted in it. More seriously, much of the coverage revolves around the publication by Atheist Ireland of 25 potentially blasphemous quotations in the hope of provoking a prosecution; and they’ve opened an online petition to challenge the blasphemy provisions of the 2009 Act.…

O’Rorke on the Defamation Act

2 January, 20103 February, 2010

| 2 Comments

| Defamation, Defamation Act 2009, Defamation Bill 2006

Writing in today’s Irish Times, Andrew O’Rorke, Chairman of Hayes Solicitors who are that paper’s legal advisors, welcomes the recent commencement of the Defamation Act, 2009 (much as the Editor did at the time of its enactment):

Defamation Act will facilitate more sensible, efficient justice

… The impetus to change the law on defamation originated in 1987. … Government has always been suspicious of media’s perception of its own importance to society. It is an uneasy relationship, which has probably deteriorated in recent times with the increasing examination and analysis of executive action and conduct. There was a marked reluctance to proceed with new legislation, as is evidenced by the almost 20-year gap in finally introducing the Bill in 2006 and the delays since then, …

Freedom of expression is a fundamental right, a cornerstone of any democratic, tolerant society, and when sought to be exercised by journalists it should be for the benefit of and on behalf of that same society and the public’s right to know. It is a precious right, but not one that can be exercised in defiance of others’ rights and certainly not if it vilifies another person or paints an untrue picture of that person, their character or actions, which is the essence of defamation.

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Birthday Times

1 January, 2010

| 1 Comment

| criminal libel, General, Journalists' sources

Masthead of first edition of the Times, via the Times archive

The above image is the front page of the first ever Times newspaper, first published as the Universal Daily Register on 1 January 1785. From today’s Times Online:

The Times celebrates its 225th birthday

How a former bankrupt with a big idea started a feeble rumbling that became The Thunderer

On this day 225 years ago the very first issue of a newspaper that would soon be renamed The Times appeared on the streets of London. … its beginnings were, to put it mildly, inauspicious … Yet the paper did survive, and prosper, thanks in part to the energy and vision of its creator, John Walter, a former coal merchant, entrepreneur and Lloyd’s underwriter who had declared himself bankrupt after he was ruined by a combination of the American War of Independence and a Jamaican hurricane. …

In 1789 he was put on trial for libelling the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Cumberland. He refused to reveal his sources, and was sentenced to a year in Newgate Prison, fined £50 and ordered to stand in the pillory at Charing Cross for an hour. This last part of the sentence was lifted, although editors of The Times have occasionally been pilloried since.

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