In Bulgaria, defamation is officially a criminal offence, but the prison sentence was abolished in 1999. Articles 146 (insult), 147 (criminal defamation) and 148 (public insult) of the Criminal Code provide for a fine. [75] A more recent defamation case was Hockey v Fairfax Media Publications Pty Limited [2015], heard by the Federal Court of Australia. [197] This judgment was important because it showed that tweets that already contain only three words can be defamatory, as noted in this case. [197] A plaintiff must also bring a defamation action within one year from the date of publication of the defamatory material. The court will only accept claims after one year if it deems it to be fair. Less than half of U.S. states have criminal defamation laws, and the applicability of those laws is limited by the First Amendment in the United States. The Constitution and laws are rarely enforced. [148] At the federal level, there are no laws against criminal defamation or insult in the United States.
However, at the state level, 23 states and 2 territories have criminal defamation laws, as well as 1 state (Iowa) that establishes defamation/defamation as a criminal offense by case law (without a crime defined by law): Alabama,[149] Florida,[150] Idaho,[151] Illinois,[152] Iowa,[153] Kansas,[154] Kentucky,[155] Louisiana,[156] Massachusetts, [157] Michigan,[158] Minnesota, [159] Mississippi, [160] Montana,[161] Nevada,[162] New Hampshire,[163] New Mexico,[164] North Carolina,[165] North Dakota,[166] Oklahoma,[167] South Carolina,[168] Texas,[169] Utah,[170] Virginia,[171] Wisconsin,[172] Puerto Rico,[173] and Virgin Islands. [174] Article 310 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of China (中華民國刑法) criminalizes defamation declared constitutional by judges of the Constitutional Court, Judicial Yuan (司法院大法官) on July 7, 2000. [65] Countries in all regions have encouraged the criminalization of defamation by extending legislation to online content. Cybercrime and anti-terrorism laws passed around the world have led bloggers to appear in court, with some serving prison sentences. [11] The Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations, the OSCE, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the African Commission on Human and Peoples` Rights stated in a joint statement in March 2017 that „general bans on the dissemination of information based on vague and ambiguous ideas, including `fake news` or `non-objective information`, with international standards for restrictions on freedom of expression are incompatible. and should be abolished. [11] According to Article 184 of the Czech Criminal Code, defamation is a crime. Penalties may not exceed one year`s imprisonment (articles 184-1) or, if the offence is committed by the press, cinema, radio, television, a computer network accessible to the public or by methods of „similar effectiveness”, the offender may remain in prison for up to two years or be prohibited from carrying out a particular activity. [77] However, only the most serious cases are prosecuted.
Less serious cases can be resolved by an action for an apology, damages or injunction. According to a 2005 official report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on defamation laws, 57 people in Canada were charged with defamation, defamation and insult, of whom 23 were sentenced – 9 to prison, 19 to probation and one to a fine. The average prison sentence was 270 days and the maximum sentence was 1460 days in prison. [130] In Quebec, defamation was originally based on the law inherited from the France. In order to establish civil liability for defamation, the plaintiff must, after weighing the probabilities, prove the existence of damage (fault), an unlawful act (damage) and a causal link (causation) between the two. A person who has made defamatory remarks is not necessarily liable under civil law. The applicant must also prove that the person who made the observations committed an unlawful act. Defamation in Quebec is governed by a standard of adequacy, as opposed to strict liability; A defendant who made a false statement would not be held liable if it were reasonable to assume that the testimony is true. [122] Anyone who attributes something to the other person in front of a third person in a manner that is likely to damage the reputation of that other person or to denounce that other person is qualified as defamation and liable to imprisonment for up to one year or a fine of up to twenty thousand baht. or both.
Section 327. Family defamation Modern defamation and defamation laws (as applied in many, but not all, Commonwealth countries) in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland originally stemmed from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat unclear. Civil claims for damages seem to have been relatively frequent already during the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), although it is not known whether criminal proceedings of general application were in use. The first fully reported case, in which defamation is generally upheld as punishable under the common law, was heard during the reign of James I. With respect to defamation on the Internet, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2011 that a person who posts hyperlinks on a website to another website with defamatory content will not publish that defamatory material for the purposes of the Defamation and Defamation Act. [123] [124] Defamation occurs when something is said or written about someone who is false and damages their reputation. In some cases, it may be possible to take legal action against those responsible for defamatory statements or comments.
On the other hand, defamation is punishable only by a maximum fine of 180 daily penalties (Articles 173-1). [104] In the case of a deceased or absent person, there is a restriction on the application of the law up to 30 years (after death). [105] In the Netherlands, defamation is usually dealt with by filing a civil action with the District Court.