A defamation bill currently proposed in the British Parliament would force website operators to reveal the identities of anyone posting defamatory comments on their forums. Multiple companies and individual have threatened to take legal action in the past against so-called ‘trolls,’ but, due to costs and current legal constraints, identification of these individuals is often difficult and drawn-out.
The proposed legislation would allow the website operators to work as intermediaries between the author and complainant. If mediation does not work, the website would be, according to al Jazeera, “required to hand over the subscriber’s contact details so the complainant could pursue legal action against the author.”
