It's probably not the best time to be seen defending an MP, but here goes. Conservative MP Nadine Dorries has been pilloried for likening the Daily Telegraph's handling of the MPs' expenses story to "torture" – drip-feeding information and keeping MPs waiting nervously by the phone each morning, awaiting the dreaded call. On her blog, Dorries questioned the motives of the Telegraph and its owners, the Barclay brothers, in this tactic.
The Daily Telegraph objected to Dorries' allegations that it may not have been acting entirely in the public interest. As the Conservative blogger Dizzy reported, the Barclays were upset by the Tory MP's claim that they had a political interest in driving people away from mainstream parties, a claim dismissed as "nonsense" in a letter to Dorries from their solicitors, Withers, demanding the removal of the "defamatory material".
This is not healthy: no matter the veracity of Dorries' claims, it must be bad for democracy when an MP – or anyone else – cannot speculate on the motives of the rich and powerful. But there is another issue lurking here, beyond MPs' expenses and the motivations of newspapers and their owners. The solicitors acting for the Telegraph and the Barclay brothers sent their complaint not just to Dorries, but to her internet service provider, TDMWeb. The ISP attempted to contact Dorries' webmaster but, it being after eight on the Friday night of a bank holiday weekend, he was not at his desk. Shortly afterwards, Dorries' blog disappeared, taken down by the ISP.
It's back up now, minus the material the Telegraph and the Barclays found so offensive. So the Telegraph and its owners got what they wanted, merely by threatening the ISP as "publishers" of Dorries' allegedly defamatory blog post. Dorries has posted a rather fraught blog describing the terror of being pursued by "two of the richest men in the world who own a newspaper empire and can pretty much say what they want, when they want, to who they want, had, using their wealth and muscle, shut me down".
I sympathise with the ISP here. It is absurd that they can be held legally accountable for content on sites they host: it's akin to holding the Royal Mail responsible for every word in every letter. They should not be in this position: as the email from a TDMWeb staff member to Dorries' webmaster, asking him to remove the post, put it: "This request makes no judgment on the validity or otherwise of the Telegraph's request. It is simply a reflection of the practicality that neither ourselves nor our upstream providers can get involved in issues between the parties concerned."
ISPs are in a state of limbo when it comes to libel: while they are legally regarded as conduits rather than publishers, they are liable for legal action if they do not remove illegal material of which they have "actual knowledge". But in cases such as this, it is not established whether the content is in fact illegal, or defamatory. The Internet Service Providers Association rightly says: "ISPs are not qualified, sufficiently authorised or resourced to decide on the legality of all the material on the Internet."
Once more, the need for reform of England's libel laws is made clear.