-12“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 was disseminated by him which ought to have led him to suppose that it contained a libel, and (3) that, when the work was disseminated by him, it was not by any negligence on his part that he did not know that it contained the libel, then, although the dissemination of the work by him was prima facie publication of it, he may nevertheless, on proof of the before-mentioned facts, be held not to have published it. But the onus of proving such facts lies on him, and the question of publication or non-publication is in such a case one for the jury.” 28. In Vizetelly, the defendants operated a circulating library and were sued for lending out and selling copies of a book which, unknown to them, contained a libel on the plaintiff. The defendants pleaded but failed to establish the defence of innocent dissemination since they ought to have known of the libel but had negligently failed to take note of advertisements placed in the trade press by the commercial publishers of the book (who had been successfully sued by the plaintiff) recalling all copies of the book so that the offending page could be replaced. 29. The defence thus has two important features. First, not every person involved in the process of publication can rely on it. It is not available to “the printer or the first or main publisher of a work which contains a libel” but is confined to persons who, in the ordinary course of business, play “a subordinate part in disseminating it”. Secondly, for this second class of persons, it replaces the strict liability rule with a rule which imposes liability on the basis that the person playing the subordinate role knew or ought by the exercise of reasonable care, in the circumstances in which the work came to him or was disseminated, to have known that the article disseminated contained defamatory material. It places the onus on such subordinate disseminators to prove that they did not know that the article contained a libel and that their lack of knowledge was not due to their own lack of care.