The dynamic improvement of the Web and the unremitting

progression of colossal shows of online dispersions have

tremendously empowered the movement of the key right to one
side to talk uninhibitedly and verbalization. Regardless, the
comfort and solace of the accessibility and the circulation in the
electronic environment typically come as an entwined unit with
different potential perils as barbarous Web customers could
without quite a bit of a stretch experience these online stages for
the purpose of the privilege to talk openly. Any kind of online
materials, including scorn talk and defamatory preparations, can
be smoothly made and scattered into the overall public territory
through different sorts of electronic applications, most
prominently interpersonal cooperation organizations (SNS, for
instance, Facebook and Twitter furthermore web logs
(destinations). Thus, it is pertinent that fitting and perhaps near
legitimate shields are put situated up for online and logged off
talk to guarantee the diversions of the overall public and the
state.

At present, wide scopes of lawful measures have been figured

and promptly accessible to administer online outflow on the
Internet. These incorporate open request laws, particular laws
for focused on correspondences and media law (Rowbottom,
2012). Also, laws intended to control unsafe messages to a
particular individual or set of people have additionally been
connected to hostile interchanges on the Internet. This could be
best outlined with the Malicious Communications Act 1998
which has been utilized by the police to alert a man for making a
false assertion about a TV indicate in his site despite the fact
that the law was at first instituted to handle the issue of toxic
substance pen letters in logged off world. Aside from that,
defamatory charges and activities for abuse of private data have
additionally been started against wrongdoer in the digital world.

Any talk on general law or particular media tenets includes an

endless range and it is alongside difficulty to incorporate such
discourse. Accordingly, this paper will limit its scope to
defamation only. This is mainly due to the fact that defamation
law constitutes one of the most common permitted restrictions
on the exercise of the right to freedom of speech and expression.
It is in this manner to perceive how online defamatory materials
are managed in the United Kingdom, Singapore and Malaysia.
In perspective of this, offers a brief diagram of defamatory
explanations, the status of defamatory materials in online
distribution, the use of various and single production tenets to
Internet productions and the lawful position of online middle
people.

The law of defamation in Malaysia, is the law which governed

defamation is the Malaysian Defamation Act 1957. This act is in
pari materia with the English Defamation Act 1952 and governs
civil defamation whilst sections 499 and 500 of the Malaysian
Penal Code deal with criminal libel. Similar to the UK 1996 and
2013 Acts, the statute provides no single definition of what
defamation is. This resulted in the courts in the country closely
following the law in the UK. Nevertheless, there is still no
uniform or comprehensive definition of what constitutes
defamation. A number of cases have deliberated the
interpretation of the word.
In Syed Husin Ali v Syarikat Perchetakan Utusan Melayu Bhd
& Anor (1973) 2 MLJ 56, the defamatory test has been set out
by Mohd Azmi J as follows:
Thus, the test of defamatory nature of a statement is its tendency
to excite against the plaintiff the adverse opinion of others,
although no one believes the statement to be true. Another test
is: would the words tend to lower the plaintiff in the estimation
of right thinking members of society generally? The typical type
of defamation is an attack upon the moral character of the
plaintiff attributing crimes, dishonesty, untruthfulness,
ingratitude or cruelty.
The issue has also been discussed by the Court of Appeal in
Chok Foo Choo @ Chok Kee Lian v The China Press Bhd
[1991] 1 MLJ 37. In this case, Gopal Sri Ram JCA observed
that:
In my judgment, the test which is to be applied lies in the
question: do the words published in their natural and ordinary
meaning impute to the plaintiff any dishonourable or
discreditable conduct or motives or a lack of integrity on his
part? If the question invites an affirmative response, then the
words complained of are defamatory.
And in Dato Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim v The New Straits Times
Press (M) Sdn Bhd & Anor [2010] 2 MLJ 492, the same judicial
interpretations have been considered and Harmindar Singh JC
accordingly observed that:
In my assessment, therefore, an imputation would be defamatory
if its effect is to expose the plaintiff, in the eyes of community,
to hatred, ridicule or contempt or to lower him or her in their
estimation or to cause him or her to be shunned and avoided by
them. This is to be judged by ordinary, right-thinking members
of the community or an appreciable and reputable section of the
community.

The Court has recognised cyber defamation to be the same as

other forms of defamation and you can take action against a
person who defames you over the internet. Even if they did not
name you, as long as there is enough information for other
people to recognise that the defamatory material is about you,
then it is enough. If you feel that you have been defamed by
comments, photos or other material written about you online
you can contact the website administrator and/or the police.
Publication is the fundamental basis of defamation liability as no action can be
maintained unless it can be proved that the allegedly defamatory materials have been
published to a person other than the claimant or their spouse. The statue of limitations
for defamation to be governed by the single-publication rule. Under this rule any
forms of mass communications or aggregate publication is a single communication
and can give rise to only one action of libel. The rule applies where the
communication is simultaneously available to multiple person. Under the single rule
publication also, the statement is considered published and the statue of limitations
runs as soon as the communication enters the stream of commerce. As in In Pullman v
W. Hill & Co Ltd, publication has been defined by Lord Esher MR as The making
known of defamatory matter after it has been written to some person other than the
person to whom it is written. In Wenhak v Morgan, another very old case, the court
ruled that where the communication was made to the spouse of the defendant, there
will be no publication. The rationale to the single publication rule is expressly stated
in the Restatement of Torts avoid multiplicity of actions and undue harassment to
the defendant by repeated suits by new individuals, as well as excessive damages that
might have been recovered in numerous separates suites. This issue can be discussed
in the case of YB Hj Khalid Bin Abdul Samad v Datuk Aziz Bin Isham & Anor.
Where the Plaintiff is an opposition MP fro Shah Alam, sued the defendants for libels
arising out of their republication of an article defamatory of him which originally
appeared on the official blog of another MP. The court found the defendants liable for
defamation as they made no attempts to verify the veracity of the article and they
failed to publish any disclaimer indicating that the views expressed in the article were
those of the MP and not of the defendants.

Moving on to social media network (SNS). SNS have occupied and insurmountable
space in our lives. In this current age where SNS is growing fast and many people
suffer from the urge to quickly put up their thoughts and opinions on different matters
on the internet or SNS. For example, if the statement is made in a public social forum
such as Facebook or Twitter, it is much easier to determine the identity of the speaker.
You may not know the reach of the damaging statements about you -- because who is
able to see the statement will depend on the speaker's privacy settings for their
Facebook or Twitter account -- but it is fairly simple to prove who said it, and it is
obvious that the statement was indeed published.
Building your defamation claim gets trickier when it comes to web pages such as
blogs or public media sites, including online newspapers or magazines. Bloggers may
be transparent, or they may choose to keep their identities anonymous in order to
protect themselves. Accordingly, it may be very hard to determine who has published
a statement if it appears on someone's blog.

This gets even more difficult when it comes to comments that readers can leave on
blogs or on online news articles. Most sites do not require people to use their real
names or to provide identifying information such as name, location, or email address.
Even if they do, people could provide false information so they are difficult to track.

If you believe you have been defamed on a site such as a blog, a smart first step
would be to contact the blogger and ask him to remove the statement, whether the
blogger or a reader made it. Bloggers do retain control over the content of their sites,
and they can always delete harmful comments. Doing this may alleviate the problem
before it gets out of control. The same is true for other Internet service providers --
although they typically are not legally liable for material published by others on their
sites, they may be able to remove it or help you find out who published it.

Once a defamatory statement is published on the Internet, the damage is usually done.
Even content that is later removed may be found by diligent searchers. But, on the
bright side, proving publication is easy, and if you must prove harm to reputation, that
may be done simply by saving and printing any negative comments left by people
who read the defamatory story.

Because false statements can reach hundreds or thousands of individuals at once when
they are published online, it is important that a remedy exist for those who suffer
online defamation. A defamatory statement on a blog may be read by a large number
of people, and then shared via email or sites like Facebook, increasing the publication
and the damage exponentially.

When the damage done to the defamed is significant, quantifiable, and documented, a
lawsuit for defamation may arise.