Defamatory messageboard comments should be treated as slander and not libel, Justice Eady ruled recently, significantly changing the way online comments are dealt with by the courts.

As The Telegraph’s Shane Richmond points out, Eady said in a case concerning an obscure financial messageboard that the comments were much closer to slander “than the usual, more permanent kind of communications found in libel actions”.

Reports of the case can be found here and here.