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Avatars tackled for libel
The Court of Appeal has upheld a High Court decision to reject an application for a Norwich Pharmacal Order (NPO) drafted in wide terms, that would have required an operator of internet bulletin boards to disclose account details and IP addresses relating to 252 postings of comments made by 64 avatars (individuals using online user names), but to grant a narrower order for disclosure relating to 100 or so postings. (The order sought would, in effect, have required the court to conduct an individual examination of each of the 252 postings to decide if the postings were arguably libellous and merited orders for disclosure.)
The Court of Appeal said that litigants should not provide the court with an indiscriminate and disorganised mass of material. The applicant should have discriminated by reducing the number of postings which would legitimately have served his purpose and should have organised the material in a coherent and manageable form to set out the libels of which he complained. The High Court had the discretion to decline to address item by item an indiscriminate and disorganised mass of material.
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