Defamation Bill

My Lords, as a website operator, I urge my noble friend the Minister to take no rubbish from website operators. I have great sympathy with the purpose of this amendment. There are a lot of people out there who are essentially defenceless when things appear about them on the web. We need to make sure that the regulations enable them to get easy redress and relief and that we do not allow long timescales to suit operators when short timescales would suit the people who have been defamed. At the same time, as my noble friend said, we have to balance that with our freedom to be rude about people who we need to be rude about and to say nasty things about Ruritania or anywhere else, and to keep the powerful under control. It is a difficult balancing act. I think that the right way to deal with this is in the regulations under Clause 5(5), which can go into some detail and some precision about this. I would hate to be subject to this amendment. As a website operator I really would not know where I was, or what I was or was not allowed to do, particularly with no supporting regulations. Therefore, I cannot support the amendment but I very much support the spirit behind it.