Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: a Victory for Free Speech

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142941
Change in British Law a Victory for Free Speech Worldwide
by Amiel Ungar
Britain is about to change its libel laws. This development rates as
world news for a few reasons: Britain will no longer be the favored
site for "libel tourism,"  which  will have an impact on publications
covering topical issues such as terrorism and those who fund it.
Secondly, it demonstrates that when the United States changes its laws
to right an injustice, other countries, even those with venerable
legal traditions like Britain, have to follow suit.
Under the current law, one could bring suit against someone who
published a book in the United States or an English Internet site,
however obscure, for libel. The plaintiff did not have to demonstrate
that he had sustained any actual loss. He just had to say that he was
likely to do so. British libel laws placed the burden of proof on the
defendant rather than on the plaintiff.
The British decision can be viewed as a victory for Doctor Rachel
Ehrenfeld, an Israeli-American counterterrorism expert. She published
a book entitled Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to
Stop It, in which she accused Khalid bin Mahfouz, a banker to the
Saudi royal family and one of the world's plutocrats. of setting up a
banking system to assist Osama bin Laden and using his charitable
foundations as a front for terrorist organizations.
Bin Mahfouz took Ehrenfeld to court, not in New York where the book
was published, but in England. It sufficed that 23 copies of the book
had been ordered on the Internet in Britain to allow the British
courts to assume jurisdiction. The British libel laws gave wealthy
plaintiffs a tremendous advantage because the huge court costs –
insignificant for someone like bin Mafhouz, could not be borne by
average defendants, even if they were eventually exonerated by the
court. Publishers usually preferred to settle, but even worse, adopted
a policy of self-censorship to avoid the slightest exposure to
lawsuits.
Ehrenfeld took the Saudi foreign financier to court in New York,
seeking a judgment that the English libel decision was a violation of
the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and therefore void. The
federal court dismissed her case for lack of jurisdiction and
Ehrenfeld went to the Court of Appeals, which upheld the lower court,
but suggested a remedy. It declared that the issue of jurisdiction
could be defined by the legislature.
The New York State Legislature acted by limiting the enforcement of
foreign label libel judgments to those which satisfied "the freedom of
speech and press protections guaranteed by both the United States and
New York Constitutions." Other states followed suit, and last year
Congress made it a national law by passing the Speech Act.  In the
words of Senator Patrick Leahy , "this bill is a needed first step to
ensure that weak free-speech protections and abusive legal practices
in foreign countries do not prevent Americans from fully exercising
their constitutional right to speak and debate freely.”
Britain has now been forced to follow suit. A person submitting a
libel suit will have to prove,  according to Kenneth Clark,  the
Secretary of Justice, that England and Wales are "clearly the most
appropriate place in which to bring an action."
According to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, "We are addressing
libel tourism by tightening the rules, so that it is much harder to
bring overseas claims to our courts when there is little connection to
the UK. If such a link can't be demonstrated our judges will simply
turn the case away."
English may eventually be supplanted by Mandarin Chinese, but as of
now it is the world's lingua franca and therefore this is far more
than a legal nicety. It is a victory for free speech worldwide.

 Saudi royal family
quelli il cui intervento in Bahrein Tafazzi ha applaudito? LOL