Twitter libel and publication

The hot topic on Twitter at the moment is the Twitter Joke Trial (and the subsequent "uprising"), but this isn't the only occasion on which Twitter has been seen in Court recently.

The High Court has also handed down a judgement in the case of Cairns v Modi (judgement available on Bailii).

This is a claim in relation to the alleged defamation on Twitter of the cricketer Chris Cairns. The judgement is a preliminary decision limited to the question of how widely the offending tweet was read in England and Wales and it doesn't set out any new point of law. However, Mr Justice Tugenhat's observations on Twitter make interesting reading.

Publication is going to be a tricky issue in these kinds of claims. The two experts in this case seem to have had differing views on the likely number of recipients, which isn't surprising considering the number of different ways a tweet can be published and read:-

• On the tweeter's own Twitter page (http://twitter.com/user)
• On their followers' timelines on their Twitter pages or via an API client (although determining how many followers actually saw the Tweet may be difficult)
• In the timelines of the followers of any original recipient who ReTweets the tweet
• On any other site or mobile client which obtains the tweet via the Twitter API (either as a follower or as a search result) such as Twitter boxes on LinkedIn profiles, blogs, news sites etc.
• In search results from anyone using Twitter search or who has a Twitter search RSS feed set up for a term contained in the tweet
• In Google search results for the relevant term (which may display the whole tweet in search results)

Twitter is clearly a risky platform so far as publication is concerned as a controversial tweet can easily reach a huge audience. On the other hand determining the actual extent of publication is not going to be an easy task.

If the case proceeds it will be worth following to see how the experts, the lawyers and the judge address it.