Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 4 July 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality
General Scheme of the Defamation (Amendment) Bill: Discussion (Resumed)
Mr. Ronan Kennedy:
I will come in with something very briefly on that. In regard to head 17A, the amendment on innocent publication in relation to website operators, we in the ICCL were struck by something. There seem to be echoes of something that happened this time last year with the amendments that were added to the electoral reform legislation regarding misinformation and the problem of foreseeability. I am not 100% sure whether this will fall into the same category. However, it should give pause for thought for the drafters to look at the fate of those amendments when the electoral reform legislation was being progressed. The amendments in question were found to be in violation of the European e-commerce directive and were subject to technical regulations information system proceedings and therefore could not be properly enacted. It might be worth looking at those again, just in the context of head 17A, in order to consider whether the issue of foreseeability arises for social media platforms. I know they probably have enough to do at the moment, but it is a pity that Twitter was not able to attend today to discuss that.
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