Here’s a link to a story at the Daily Mail from the UK
It is about a theft of an iPad. At the bottom it says
.
Why???
Possibly due to UK libel laws which have (I seem to recall) held newspapers responsible for comments published on their articles.
Libel, and contempt issues. The England/Wales Contempt of Court Act of 1981 makes it criminal contempt to publicize material which impairs the course of justice in certain cases flagged by the Attorney General. I didn’t think it applied to criminal proceedings in foreign jurisdictions but maybe they’re just being uber-cautious.
ETA: US law also makes publications liable for defamatory comments posted by users in public fora. The difference is that this only applies to moderated publications in the US.
If that were the case, surely it would mean no British newspaper would ever allow comments on stories on its site. In fact, many (maybe all or most) regularly do.
Eh? As I said, the law only applies to specific cases identified by the Attorney General.
Normally in instances of this sort trial/charges are still pending against someone else involved in the affair and publishing information which might prejudice a fair trial would be a contempt. This does not apply to foreign news, however, so it’s hard to see why in this case. Possibly someone running the Daily Mail’s hasn’t looked at it too closely but just done it as normal.
I was responding to **Andy **L, not you. He appeared to be attributing the problem in a very general way to newspapers being responsible, under UK libel laws, for comments on their site.
In any case, as this is a US case it seems unlikely that the British Attorney General would have ruled on it in the way you suggest.
I thought I recalled cases in which UK libel laws had led to lawsuits about comments, and imagined that the newspaper might anticipate legally questionable comments for an article about a killing (while they might feel that the risk of such comments was significantly less for less inflamatory articles, and thus allow comments on those). I should have been more clear - you’re quite right that what I wrote would suggest that no articles would ever have comments (and I should have researched the question before answering off the top of my head anyway - sorry about that).