#webblocking

Judgment available on Bailii: Re E (A Child) [2014] EWHC 6 (Fam)

I don't tend to get into family law, as it is one of the areas I have never studied formally, but this judgment is worth a look. It was given by Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division and while the case itself isn't of that great interest (other than for those involved), there are some interesting notes about the Internet and the Court's power over it.

The main issue stems from reporting restrictions:

As a general principle, any attempt by the English court to control foreign media, whether directly or indirectly, is simply impermissible.

This is encouraging to see - the English courts should be reluctant to interfere with domestic media, in principle, never mind foreign media. However...

... in principle, attempts by a court to control the internet are not subject to the complaint that they are thereby interfering with the purely internal affairs of a foreign State.

And so we get a distinction. Foreign media being treated differently to the Internet, whether or not those media publish stuff on the Internet, or circulate their material elsewhere. But the distinction goes further when dealing with the mother (the main target of reporting restrictions):

... the mother can publish whatever she wants in the foreign print or broadcast media or, so long as it is not in the English language, on the internet. The only restriction on the mother's freedom to publish her story is that she must not do so in the English print or broadcast media or, using the English language on the internet, in such a way as to identify E...

This strikes me as interesting because the judge seems to be laying claim to anything said on the Internet that is in English (but not Welsh or any of the other officially-recognised languages of the UK). This matches a trend in other areas of law, including copyright infringement, whereby something is assumed to be within the remit of the English courts if it is in English.

To me this seems dangerous. English is the de facto language of much of the Internet, not just in in the UK. In the web-blocking case against KAT/Fenopy/H33T, in finding that these websites targeted users in the UK, Arnold J noted (at [51]):

Fourthly, the default language of each of the Websites is English. In addition, in the case of KAT, it includes advertisements with prices in sterling. In my judgment KAT is reasonably clearly targeted at the public in the UK.

While the first to third reasons may be convincing alone, it is worrying to see that simply being in English is taken to indicate targeting of the UK. The comment about advertising may show a lack of understanding of how advertising online works, if the website operators have minimal control over the content of adverts - but that is a separate issue.

This attitude could lead to an unpleasant situation where website operators or uses suddenly find themselves in the grips of an English court simply for using the English language. This could easily spread beyond contempt of court and copyright to privacy, defamation and even the public order or communications offences.