McGrath sued Professor Richard Dawkins and various others for allegedly defamatory material posted on a web site. This was an application by the defendants to strike out the claim. The most interesting aspect of this action was that The Richard Dawkins Foundation, which operated the richarddawkinsfoundation.org web site, was potentially liable for another web site to which that site linked. When someone went to the home page of the .org web site, they linked straight through to the richarddawkins.net site. The Foundation did not operate the .net site, but the High Court ruled that the fact that there was a link through to that other site meant that the Foundation could still be liable even though the .org web site itself did not have any defamatory postings.
It was a question of fact on a case by case basis as to whether the linking site was liable. In this case, the two web sites seemed to be closely associated and the home page of the .org site went through to the .net site. Although this ruling does not mean that the Foundation was liable, the Court refused to grant the strike out application and said it should be decided at trial as the result was not sufficiently certain.
We now await the main court case to find out more about liability for sites that provide a link.