[2021] 2 MLRA Peguam Negara Malaysia v. MKINI Dotcom Sdn Bhd & Anor 449 responsibility for the publications when it knew about the comments and failed to remove them. The judge accepted that to impose legal responsibility on a person for an offence of contempt, it was essential to demonstrate a degree of awareness of the words or an assumption of general responsibility for their publication. This case illustrates a point that knowledge, in the form of ‘a degree of awareness’ is sufficient to establish the mens rea element. [27] In the Canada case of Weaver v. Corcoran 2015 BCSC 165, the Supreme Court of British Columbia had considered the issue of liability for third-party defamatory comments in the reply section of the online edition of the National Post newspaper. The plaintiff was a professor at the University of Victoria and a well-known scientist in the field of climate change. He claimed that four articles published by the newspaper defamed him. He sued the National Post, its publisher, and the journalists who authored the articles. He also claimed that the defendants were liable for numerous reader postings made in response to each of the defaming articles. [28] To find liability, the Canadian Court held that the plaintiff must prove an active or deliberate to constitute defamation. Until awareness occurred, either by internal review or specific complaints being brought to the attention of the National Post or its columnists, the National Post was considered to be in a passive instrumental role as it had taken no deliberate action amounting to approval or adoption of the contents of the reader posts. Only on failure to act or take immediate action upon being aware, would they be considered publishers as of that date. [29] Delfi AS v. Estonia (Application No 64569-09) [2015] (ECtHR), is a case from Estonia which had gone up to the Grand Chamber of the European Court Human Rights (‘ECtHR’). It was decided in 2015. The Grand Chamber affirmed the decision of the Supreme Court of Estonia by a majority of 15:2 in favour of the State of Estonia. It was found that the applicant company had been able to exercise a substantial degree of control over the readers’ comments. Hence it was in a position to predict the nature of the comments on a particular article and was therefore liable to promptly take technical or manual measures to prevent defamatory statements from being made public. [30] A not dissimilar approach was taken in the Australian case of Fairfax Media Publications; Nationwide News Pty Ltd; Australian News Channel Pty v. Voller [2020] NSWCA 102. There, the Court of Appeal of New South Wales held that the critical issues on publication rest on whether the applicants were entitled to the defence of innocent dissemination under s 32 of the Defamation Act 2005 (NSW). This was particularly so when the respondents were not instrumental in participating in publishing the defamatory statements. The court in affirming the primary judge’s decision applied the test of primary and subsidiary publishers. It held that the respondents were the primary publishers and the commentators were the subordinate or subsidiary publishers. The respondents were found to be primary publishers who participated and were