Wednesday 11 August 2010

Fuck me sideways with a rusty spoon

In which, really, I praise Barack Obama:

Yesterday, Barack Obama signed into law a provision blocking his country's thinkers and writers from foreign libel laws. The target is "libel tourism," by which complainants skip around the First Amendment by taking their cases to less conscientious countries. And by "less conscientious countries," I mean, erm, here.


Three cheers for Barack Obama! Unqualified praise for protecting your citizens from our awful, pernicious libel laws!

5 comments:

Umbongo said...

Meanwhile we are still enforcing the UK-US extradition agreement which is absurdly biased in favour of the US since it makes those who have committed - in the UK - what the US deems as a crime (but is not criminal here) extraditable to the US purely on the signature of the appropriate US official.

The Grim Reaper said...

Frankly, it's embarrassing being a British citizen at times like these. When another country is passing laws to stop judgements made here from being effective elsewhere, you know something isn't right with our libel laws. It's high time this was remedied.

Mark Wadsworth said...

I hope you're not being sarcastic, because I agree.

Apart from that, I agree with Umbongo.

Caratacus said...

Nice to see the silly fucker get something right for once.

Intruder said...

Surely the libel laws only work if the defendant has something to lose - ie if a US citizen sued a US citizen in this country then it would only work if UK sales would be affected?

I'm not trying to defend the libel law here, but if a court here says UK sales/profits should be awarded as damages then what right has a US court in overturning that?

Are they saying that US citizens, with assets here, cannot have their assets seized by non-US courts? In other words, US citizens are above the laws of any foreign country?

If they don't want to abide by UK law then just don't turn up to defend a court case, unless, of course, you have a one-side extradition treaty and have no choice!