A ruling in the High Court has just been made on a case brought by a blogger who attempted to sue a commenter for libel. The blogger, Christopher Carrie, rather disingenously set up a sock-puppet blog to promote his own book and website which in turn detailed his attempts to bring to justice Father John Tolkien (son of JRR Tolkien) whom he accused of sexual abuse. The commenter, Royd Tolkien (great-grandson of JRR Tolkien) posted a comment on the first of only two entries on the blog, accusing Carrie of fraud (presumably unaware that the blogger was Carrie himself.) If you do a quick Google search, you'll stumble fairly quickly upon the offending page, which is still available for all to see some 23 months after the initial post was made. And it was this fact that caused Sir Justice Eady to ask: why didn't Carrie just delete the comment?( Read more... )