-48120. In this case the respondents maintain for commercial reasons a forum with different discussion channels, the most popular of which is the socalled “leisure” 103 channel. Registered members of the forum would initiate discussion “threads” by posting comments thoughts and expressions which any user of the internet can read. Other subscribers respond. Thus a thread of dialogue develops. The heavier the traffic the greater the gain for the respondents, for they depend upon the number of “clicks” for their advertising income. It is not in the respondents’ commercial interest that those “threads” be dull and insipid in content. 121. Mr Michael Thomas SC’s first argument is that the respondents were the first or main publishers of the libel and as such they attract strict liability104. Libel is actionable per se, the law making the presumption that damage flows from it. And, being the first or main publishers, as Mr Thomas argues, the defence of innocent dissemination, as developed by the common law, is not available to the respondents. Mr Thomas relies on a passage in the judgment of Romer LJ in Vizetelly v Mudie’s Select Library, Limited [1900] 2 QB 170 at 180 where he said: “…The result of the cases is I think that, as regards a person who is not the printer or the first or main publisher of a work which contains a libel, but has only taken, what I may call, a subordinate part in disseminating it, in considering whether there has been publication of it by him, the particular circumstances under which he disseminated the work must be considered. If he did it in the ordinary way of his business, the nature of the business and the way in which it was conducted must be looked at; and, if he succeeds in shewing (1) that he was innocent of any knowledge of the libel contained in the work disseminated by him, (2) that there was nothing in the work or the circumstances under which it came to him or 103 In Chinese “吹水台”, a vulgar expression meaning “gossip channel”. 104 “Defamation is committed when the defendant publishes to a third person word or matters containing an untrue imputation against the reputation of the claimant”: Gatley on Libel and Slander : 11th ed. para. 1.6