The 1st of January – a time for resolutions, for good
intentions and for kind words. On 1 January 2014 these resolutions
are more apt than ever as the long-awaited Defamation Act 2013
finally comes into force. So is it time to step away from Twitter?
Have the thunderclouds broken over the long summer holiday of libel
tourism in England? And following the intense scrutiny of the press
during the Leveson Inquiry, are we finally going to give them a
break? Or is the new act, to all intents and purposes, the old one
dressed up in the Emperor's new clothes to satisfy a political
agenda?
It's been a slow legislative road to get to this point, a
journey of almost four years since the Ministry of Justice first
published a draft Defamation Bill for consultation in March 2011.
However, when put into context (the last Defamation Act came into
force in 1996, 10 years before Twitter was even founded) it was
probably a necessary one. Where once the main perpetrators of
defamatory
