Most ISPs rely on s1(3)(e) Defamation Act 1996, which states that a person shall not be considered the author, editor or publisher if they operate or provide access to a communications system by means of which the statement is transmitted, or made available, by a person over whom the ISP has no effective control. Indeed Eady J said this provision was likely to apply to Google and consequently it would not be a “publisher” for the purposes of the innocent dissemination defence.
In terms of whether Google took “reasonable care” in relation to the claimant’s complaint, Eady J agreed that it was probably a reasonable response to pass the complaint on to the blogger in question (rather than removing the alleged defamatory content itself). The huge number of posts on the Blogger.com pages made it unrealistic to investigate the truth of each offending statement.