Ms Lesley Caplin:

I agree with everything that has been said. However, there is one point at which the online world and the proposals we are dealing with today converge. That is at head 34, which relates to a notice of complaint procedure for online publication. The convergence is not necessarily with the Bill to which Deputy Smyth referred, but there is a dovetailing with the proposed digital services legislation. That creates a sort of template for a notice and take-down regime. Our experience is that tech companies are often doing their best to try to deal with the volume of complaints that come in but there obviously is a difficulty there. What I see as a difficulty with what is proposed in this Bill is potentially a difficulty with the proposed digital services legislation more broadly, which is that it imputes actual knowledge on the part of a social media platform, for example, or another intermediary service provider where such entities have failed to take down some material. It imputes actual knowledge by putting them in a place whereby they have to determine whether something is illegal or defamatory and assess whether the person complaining about that has no defence to that allegation. My respectful submission is that they are not the correct entities to be making that assessment. There is a disconnect there between what is proposed and what can actually happen in practice. If, for example, there were a court that was in a position to make that determination, it would seem to me a much more effective way to deal with the issue.