Robert Verkaik The law is catching up with those who make use of the internet to defame

The educational squabble involving a distinguished historian, his attorney mother and her husbands rivals has exploded the parable that the internet is a riotous jungle.

Stephanie Palmer used the name "orlando-birkbeck" to write glowingly of work by her father Orlando Figes whilst creation adverse comments about the books of pick historians. When accounts of these self-indulgent reviews initial published on Amazons online books pages began to crop up in the well read press, Mrs Figes contingency have realised that the diversion was up and so chose to "out" herself to The Independent.

The open annoyance of being unclosed as the writer of the tainted coop postings is degrading sufficient but the pick could have been far worse.

Under Amazons book reviews policy, any of the "wronged" historians could have contacted the online tradesman to ask for the postings to be private and the loyal temperament of the writer to be unmasked. If Amazon refused afterwards they would have been entitled to go to justice to have their case. Indeed, one of the declared historians is accepted to be deliberation a law fit to force Amazon to divulge all the computer annals relating to the postings. Mrs Figes is by no equates to the initial chairman to make use of the internet to means dissapoint by environment up a feign profile.

A office worker whose personal sum were "laid bare" in fraudulent entries on the Facebook amicable networking website won a defame box last year in the High Court.

Mathew Firsht was awarded �22,000 in indemnification opposite an old propagandize friend, Grant Raphael, who combined the profile. The decider ruled that Mr Raphaels counterclaim that the entrance was combined by mischievous celebration gate-crashers at his prosaic was "built on lies".

These cases show that whilst it is really easy to set up a fake temperament on the internet it might not be utterly so easy to hedge the consequences. The Defamation Act 1996 sets out how an internet use provider or pick third party, such as Facebook and Amazon, can rely on the counterclaim of "innocent dissemination" but the writer of the offending posting is afforded no such protection. The first fathers of the internet had dictated to emanate a superhighway free from the suffocation of synthetic law but the expansion in online lawsuit proves they have failed. Lawyers know that what happens on the universe far-reaching web is not so really opposite to what happens in the genuine world.