Blasphemy on blogs
The implications of the failure of the attempted Christian Voice blasphemy action could be really rather wide-ranging. Firstly, it hamstrings the blasphemy laws which are, in and of themselves, incompatible with freedom of speech and are superseded by the Religious Hatred laws. It seems increasingly unlikely that any prosecution could be brought under the provisions of the blasphemy laws as they can easily use the precedent set by this case; effectively, something is not blasphemous if it is said in the course of lampooning something else, which could include Christian Voice.
The other effect, of more interest to bloggers, is the judgment issued that the Theatres Act 1968 and Broadcasting Act 1990 supersede the Blasphemy Act, so that its provisions do not apply to theatres or broadcasts, whether radio or television. This may implicitly include blogs, although I suspect it would take a High Court judgement for confirmation, as they are very difficult to distinguish in any meaningful sense from radio or TV, particularly as the physical methods of transmission – ones and zeroes encoded into an EM signal – are pretty much the same. You could argue that radio is to television (particularly modern, digital satellite offerings) as television is to the internet. The question, I suppose, is whether a blog, particularly a political blog, can be considered in the same area as a newspaper.
At some point, a government is going to have to get to grips with the internet; for one thing, web hosts need legal protection against legal action for anything placed on the internet by their subscribers. For one thing, the impossibility of the task just opens anyone who writes anything controversial to frivolous action and SLAPPs. The same principle applies to comments on blogs and entries on wikis, although in this case giving a reasonable amount of time to remove offending comments. There are doubtlessly many other areas where the law is behind developments in technology and I would prefer decisions to be made by Parliament rather than judges. I cast no aspersions against the judiciary but I don’t think it’s their role or their place.
xD.
