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The Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, on behalf of the National Library of Ireland, is currently undertaking “a consultation on the legal deposit of published digital material in the 21st century in the context of copyright legislation” (see here and here). In particular, the Department welcomes submissions in relation to three questions:

Question 1: Should the policy of collecting, preserving and making available the published output of the nation for the benefit of the public be extended to include all contemporary publication formats of Irish interest including online digital formats e.g.,.ie websites?

Answer: Yes.
I have already set out my views on this issue on this blog. The starting point is Section 198 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000 (also here), which provides that publishers of books and other paper publications must deliver a copy of each book or publications published in the state to various copyright deposit libraries. Most countries worldwide have similar provisions, and they ensure the preservation and the availability of a nation’s published heritage. With the rise of digital publishing, it is increasingly being recognised that print deposit is incomplete, and that a comprehensive preservation of a nation’s published heritage requires that copyright deposit should extend to online publications as well. As a consequence, countries with copyright deposit legislation are amending their legislation to ensure that generations of will have access to today’s online stories. As a consequence, the Copyright Review Committee (of which I was chair), in the Modernising Copyright Report (pdf), recommended amendments to the 2000 Act to extend the existing copyright deposit regime for print publication in section 198 to digital works. In particular, we recommended some changes to the existing section 198; and we recommended a new section 198A broadly modelled on the existing section 198 CRRA, to ensure that the process of claiming digital publications is as similar as possible to the existing familiar process relating to books and other print publications. And we additionally recommended that the copyright deposit institutions should be able to make copies of our online digital heritage whilst it is available. No doubt our recommendations and drafts can be improved, but I remain convinced that they are an excellent starting point for achieving a feasible digital copyright deposit regime in Ireland.

Question 2: What issues arise if a policy extension on digital legal deposit is not provided for?
Answer: The real point about the size of the digital universe in the future is not about how big it will be (it will be huge) but how much is being lost (that is also huge). To take only one example, Sharon Healy did a study of link rot in the Modernising Copyright Report, and she concluded that 20% of the links in the footnotes of that Report are broken, meaning that the linked resource is no longer available. And our sources were official or public ones. To my mind, this is a perfect encapsulation why copyright deposit institutions should be able to claim digital publications and make copies of online resources – even the formal material is disappearing at frightening pace. In the US, the nonprofit Internet Archive harvests more than 250m webpages a week; it is now more than 20 years old. However, the copying by any Irish equivalent would infringe copyright in the material harvested, which is why an amendment to copyright legislation is necessary; we are already 20 years late; and the longer we wait, the bigger and blacker the digital black hole of lost material will become. It is a challenge our libraries and heritage institutions are willing to meet, if only they are let.

Question 3: What are the benefits if a policy extension on digital legal deposit is provided for?
Answer: The benefits will be not only cultural but also economic. On the cultural side, exciting projects in TCD Library and the NLI show the potential. On the economic side, the cover story of this week’s Economist tells us the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. To take only one example, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is red hot, but researchers need data on which to train and develop their AI engines. The loss of culturally significant data diminishes AI data-sets and impoverishes decisions based upon them. More generally, a proper archive of digital publications will be a resource for citizens and researchers, at home and abroad, now and in the future. The generations to come will not thank us if we do not legislate now for legal deposit of digital publications.

The saga in Bollea v Gawker shows two remedies for invasion of privacy. Hulk Hogan (real name, Terry Gene Bollea; pictured left), is a former professional wrestler and American television personality. Gawker was a celebrity news and gossip blog based in New York. In October 2012, Gawker posted portions of a secretly-recorded video of Hogan having sex in 2006 with one Heather Cole, who (as Heather Clem) was the then-wife of his then-best-friend (the wonderfully-monikered radio personality Bubba “the Love Sponge” Clem). In March 2016, a jury found Gawker liable for invading Hogan’s privacy, and awarded him a total US$140m – Gawker itself was held liable for US$115m in compensatory damages (including US $60 million for emotional distress), and US$15m in punitive damages; Gawker’s CEO, Nick Denton, was held personally liable for US$10m in punitive damages.

Gawker and Denton immediately announced that they would appeal; but first Gawker, and then Denton, both soon filed for bankruptcy. In August 2016, Gawker itself was shut down, and the media group of which it was a centrepiece was sold for US$135m. This provided the funds for a settlement: in November 2016, the case was ultimately settled for US$31m; and, in March 2017, Denton came out of bankruptcy. The US$140m damages award and eventual US$31m settlement show one remedy for invasion of privacy. In particular, this raises the issue of the extent to which damages for invasion of privacy are available at Irish law – even if, in privacy claims as in so many other areas, damages in Ireland are not of the same order of magnitude as in the US.

In a plot twist that might once have been revealed by Gawker itself, it emerged that Hogan’s case had been secretly financed by Peter Thiel, a technology billionaire (after a short career as a lawyer, he co-founded Paypal, and was Facebook’s first outside investor; he is currently founder and Chair of Palantir Technologies, and a partner at VC firm Founders Fund). This was his revenge for Gawker’s outing of him as gay in December 2007. As an application of the principles of “don’t get mad; get even” and “revenge is a dish best served cold”, this is certainly a novel remedy for invasion of privacy; but it is one that is only available to American tech billionaires. More practical are claims for injunctions and damages.

Where there is a threatened invasion of privacy, by intrusion or publication, the usual remedy is to seek an injunction to prevent it. If an injunction is refused, or if the invasion of privacy has already occurred, then the plaintiff will often seek damages. Such damages will prove an important part of the enforcement architecture of the General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR] and the proposed Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications [Proposed ePrivacy Regulation; hereafter: PePR (my acronym)]. “Money remedies for invasion of privacy at Irish law, to provide compensation for breach of the GDPR and of the Proposed ePrivacy Regulation” was the theme of my talk for the Irish Centre for European Law’s Privacy and Data Protection Conference 2017.

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The Irish Independent reports that the Gardaí (the Irish police) have launched a blasphemy probe into comments made by Stephen Fry (pictured left) on the television show The Meaning of Life:

Gardaí have launched an investigation after a TV viewer claimed comments made by Stephen Fry on an RTE show were blasphemous. Independent.ie can reveal that a member of the public reported the allegation to Ennis garda Station following a broadcast of ‘The Meaning of Life’, hosted by Gay Byrne, in February 2015.

The story has been picked up by the media, in Ireland and abroad – including the BBC, CBS, the [UK] Independent, the Irish Times, RTE, the Mail online, The Journal.ie the Sunday Times (sub req’d), the Observer, the Sunday Telegraph, and the Sydney Morning Herald.

The crime of blasphemy is provided for in section 36 of the Defamation Act, 2009 (also here). Subsection (1) provides that a “person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter” shall be guilty of an offence; anyone guilty of the offence is liable to a fine not exceeding €25,000.

Subsection (2) provides a threefold definition of when a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter. First, the matter in question must be “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred” by a religion. Second, it must cause “outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion”. And, third, the person who published or uttered the blasphemous matter must intend to cause such outrage. I’m not sure that any, let alone all, of these three elements were made out by Fry’s interview. An articulate challenge to God is not gross abuse or insult to a religion; controversy is not outrage; and candidly defending atheism is not intentionally causing outrage.

However, even Fry’s if comments do meet these criteria, subsection (3) provides that it is a defence to prove “that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value” in the relevant matter. I think that Fry’s interview would easily meet that standard; just as I thought that an Irish publication of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed would too. As Atheist Ireland told the Sunday Times (sub req’d), the Garda investigation “highlights a silly, silencing and dangerous law”.

But it should not have come to this. Freedom of expression is protected by Article 40.6.1(i) of the Constitution, and the last sentence of that paragraph provides that the publication or utterance of blasphemous matter is an offence punishable by law. In Corway v Independent Newspapers [1999] 4 IR 485, [2000] 1 ILRM 426, [1999] IESC 5 (30 July 1999) (noted here), the Supreme Court held that there was no clear statutory definition of blasphemy to give effect to this provision. Section 36 was enacted to fill that legislative gap. On Monday 27 January 2014, the Constitutional Convention published its Sixth Report, recommending the removal of the offence of blasphemy from the Constitution. But the last government kicked the issue to touch; and the current government’s most recent Legislation Programme (pdf p17) says only that “preliminary work has commenced” on a Bill to provide for a referendum on removing the crime of blasphemy from the Constitution. I contributed to the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention that led to this recommendation, and I am disappointed that it has not been implemented.

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Two sole traders form a partnership, and then fall out, so that one sues the other for outstanding monies. It is a common enough story now, and was even in the early 1700s. There is normally little of general interest in such case; but, in 1725, the additional facts in Everet v Williams earned it a notoriety that persists to this day, because the plaintiff had sued the defendant for the proceeds of highway robbery, and there had been a classic falling out amongst thieves. Unsurprisingly, the Court declined to lend its aid to the claim, and dismissed the case with costs (see Everet v Williams (1725) reported (1787) 2 European Magazine 360 (pdf) and (1893) 9 Law Quarterly Review 197 (pdf); see also William David Evans (ed) Pothier on Obligations (Strahan, London, 1802, vol 2) 3 (pdf); Nathaniel Lindley A Treatise on the Law of Partnership (1st ed, Johnson & Co, London, 1860) 161 (pdf); Robert Megarry Miscellany-at-Law (Sweet & Maxwell, London, 1955) 76 (pdf); mentalfloss).

The Court’s approach in this case was replicated by Twomey J in English v O’Driscoll [2016] IEHC 584 (25 October 2016), whilst the case itself was cited by Humphreys J in the High Court in KP v The Minister for Justice and Equality [2017] IEHC 95 (20 February 2017). In this short post, I want to mention the outcome in Everet v Williams, note its subsequent judicial citation, and refer briefly to the recent judgments of Humphreys and Twomey JJ.

In Everet v Williams, the Court referred the matter to the wonderfully-titled Deputy Remembrancer of the Court of Exchequer in Equity. His report that the case was a matter of “scandal and impertinence” was confirmed by the Court; the parties solicitors were attached for contempt and fined £50 each for reflecting so disreputably “upon the honour and dignity” of the Court; and the lawyer who drafted the plaintiff’s proceedings was ordered to bear the costs of the action for causing such “indignity to the Court”. But the parties did not learn their lesson; and they continued – separately – to ply their trade, until their luck eventually ran out: John Everet, the plaintiff, was executed at Tyburn in 1730; and Joseph Williams, the defendant, was executed at Maidstone in 1727 – by not hanging together, they were hanged separately, proving Benjamin Franklin’s aphorism half a century before he uttered it!

Moreover, in 1735, the almost equally colourful William Wreathock, the plaintiff’s solicitor, was convicted of conspiracy and robbery, and sentenced to be hanged. However, his sentence was commuted to transportation, though he eventually obtained a Royal Pardon, returned to England, and resumed his practice; nevertheless, he was struck off the roll of attorneys in 1758 (see Malcolm McKenzie Park “William Wreathcock – Imperfect Attorney” (1993) 87 Victorian Bar News 73 (SSRN)).

The case has had a strong pull on the legal imagination down the ages. (more…)

The Private Law Discussion Group in the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, is delighted to welcome Dr Niamh Connolly (University College London) next Thursday, 30 March 2017, at 2:00pm, in the Trinity Research in Social Sciences (TRiSS) Seminar Room, 6th floor, Arts Building, TCD (map), to give a paper on

The Future of Restitution in Ireland.

All are welcome, particularly those with a research interest in private law, unjust enrichment and restitution. This event is open to the public and free of charge. If you would like to attend, please register on Eventbrite.

Dr Niamh Connolly (pictured right) is a lecturer at University College London, where she moved from Trinity College Dublin in 2016. Her principal research and teaching interest is in unjust enrichment law. She is interested in how Irish private law compares to that of England and Wales, and in differences in legal culture that affect the substantive law in these jurisdictions. Her paper will seek to interpret the sparse Irish case law on unjust enrichment in light of this wider question about the specificity of Irish law. In particular, Niamh will ask whether Irish legal culture is less formalist than that of England and Wales, and if so, how that affects Irish restitution law. Niamh hopes that the seminar will provide an opportunity to hear the views of other Irish jurists as to the possible distinctiveness of Irish judicial approaches in private law.

The Private Law Discussion Group is a Research Group in the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, which invites collaboration and engagement nationally and internationally on private law, including property law, tort, contract, restitution, and unjust enrichment.

The Irish Society for European Law will hold an Update on Data Protection, next Thursday, 23 March 2017, at 6:30pm in the Ormond Meeting Rooms, 31-36 Ormond Quay Upper, Dublin 7.

The event will be chaired by the Hon Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan, Judge of the Court of Appeal; and the speakers will be Bruno Gencarelli (Head of the Data Flows & Protection Unit, DG Justice & Consumers, European Commission), Andreas Carney (Partner, Matheson), Emily Gibson BL (Law Library, Dublin), and me.

The event is open to all and is free of charge to ISEL members (there is a €30 charge for non-ISEL members, payable on arrival). Places are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Please register for the event at www.isel.ie. 1.5 CPD points are available for this event.

The title of my talk is: The Right to be Forgotten – is it time to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony? I will consider whether delinking in support of the right to be forgotten [R2bF] ought to have worldwide effect. My talk will be in three brief parts. The first part will consider CJEU R2bF caselaw and member-state developments on the question whether an R2bF delinking derived from EU law should be effective worldwide or just inside the EU. Against this backdrop, the second part of the talk will argue that the Circuit Court decision Savage v Data Protection Commissioner & Google (Circuit Court, unreported, 11 October 2016, Sheahan J; pdf via DPC) mis-applied the R2bF. Third, combining the first and second parts, the final part of the talk will consider the proceedings in Google v Equustek Solutions (hearing 5 December 2016; webcast), in which the Supreme Court of Canada was invited to uphold an injunction (2015 BCCA 265) that an R2bF delinking derived from Canadian common law and constitutional considerations should be effective worldwide.

A fascinating post on Daniel O’Connell and free speech was published on the excellent Irish Philosophy website last Monday, in honour of Daniel O’Connell‘s birth on 6 August 1775, near Cahirciveen, Co. Kerry; here’s an extract (emphasis added):

Given his political philosophy, it is not surprising that Daniel O’Connell was a champion of free speech. … [At] the Monster Meetings of the 1840s, … huge crowds gathered to hear O’Connell speak. … Though the meetings were orderly, the government grew worried trouble would break out. Sir Robert Peel outlawed the next Monster Meeting, planned for Clontarf on 8 October 1843. Though O’Connell called off the rally, he was still arrested and charged with conspiracy.

O’Connell spoke in his own defense, pointing out the “conspiracy” was neither secret nor criminal, arguing that calling such a movement as his a conspiracy would prevent improvement of any institutions …

Do not attempt to take away from your fellow subjects the legitimate mode of effecting useful purposes by public meetings, public canvassing — speaking bold truths boldly and firmly.

O’Connell was found guilty … The verdict was appealed to the House of Lords, reversed, and O’Connell left prison after three months, a hero in the fight for freedom of speech.

On the trial, see Report of the Irish State Trials, 1844 (Google Books).

On the appeal, see O’Connell v R (1844) 11 Cl & Fin 155, (1844) 8 ER 1061, [1844] EngR 880 (9 September 1844) (pdf); and see also the House of Lords Frees Daniel O’Connell on Myles Dungan’s blog.

On O’Connell generally, see Patrick Geoghegan King Dan: The rise of Daniel O’Connell, 1775-1829 (Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 2008 | Amazon) and Liberator: The life and death of Daniel O’Connell, 1830-1847 (Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 2010 | Amazon).

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) seminar on the Constitutional and Human Rights Implications of BREXIT, North and South this evening at 5:00pm in the Distillery Building, Church Street, Dublin 7 (map via here). It’s something I’ve blogged about here, here, here and here. Since then, the UK Supreme Court has handed down its judgment in R (on the application of Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5 (24 January 2017). I wrote an OpEd on the case in the Irish Times the following day. (more…)