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John Bunt was attempting to sue three individuals and their service providers - AOL, BT and Tiscali - for postings on a Usenet message board. Bunt's lawyers based their case on the basis of the 2001 Godfrey v Demon Internet ruling that determined that Demon was liable for posts on its own news server, although the post has been made by an unknown person via another ISP.

However, the Honourable Mr Justice Eady ruled that this did not apply in Bunt's case. He said that in Godfrey v Demon, the ISP 'had actively chosen to receive and store the news group exchanges containing the posting,' adding that Demon was 'within its power to obliterate the posting, as indeed later happened'. In this case, however, the Usenet service was not hosted by any of the defendants.

Justice Eady said that AOL, BT and Tiscali had performed 'no more than a passive role in facilitating postings on the Internet' and could not be liable for the content of those messages because they were not deemed to be a publisher of them.

'I would not, in the absence of any binding authority, attribute liability at common law to a telephone company or other passive medium of communication, such as an ISP. ... persons who truly fulfil no more than the role of a passive medium for communication cannot be characterised as publishers: thus they do not need a defence,' he concluded.

Justice Eady's ruling can be read at www.bailii.org.