UK businessman wins Facebook libel case

In a legal ruling likely to send a chill through the global social networking phenomenon of Facebook, a British businessman has been awarded £22,000 ($44,000, 28,000 Euro) in damages from a former school friend who created a fake profile of him on the website.

Mathew Firsht brought the landmark libel action after coming across a Facebook group titled "Has Mathew Firsht lied to you?" as well as a profile containing false claims about his sexuality, religion and political views.

The damages awarded on Thursday by the High Court, as well as the record payout given to Max Mosley, the motorsports chief accused of indulging in a Nazi-themed orgy, will serve as a stark warning to old and new media alike, experts said.

London, already known as the libel capital of the world because of laws that make it easy for the rich and powerful to bring claims, is now playing an equally important role in the emerging area of privacy law.

Mr Mosley, the 68-year-old son of the wartime British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, won £60,000 ($120,000, 76,000 Euro) in compensation after the News of the World released photos and video extracts of him indulging in a sadomasochistic sex session with a group of prostitutes in March.

The head of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, Formula One's governing body, maintained that while he had a decades-long predilection for bondage and corporal punishment, none of his sessions ever involved something as "unerotic" as Nazi role-play.

The damages awarded are the largest ever in a privacy case - dwarfing the £5,000 won by the Canadian folk singer Loreena McKennitt in 2005 - and will make it more difficult for newspapers to defend "kiss and tell" stories that centre principally on the sex lives of celebrities and well-known athletes. Mr Firscht's case is likely to have an even broader impact. Since its inception in 2004 at Harvard University, Facebook has grown to become the fourth most-trafficked website in the world, with more than 90m active users.

Users who think of the site as a harmless way to catch up with friends still do not appreciate the risks of posting jokes or other potentially embarrassing details about friends and colleagues, experts said.

"It is one thing for the News of the World to be ordered to pay Max Mosley £60,000," said Ashley Hurst, a media lawyer who acted on the case. "It is quite another for a private individual to be ordered to pay an ex-school friend £22,000, plus costs. That's a big hit."

www.ft.com | Megan Murphy | 2008-07-24