-51it. The question before Morland J was whether the defendant had an arguable defence under s.1(1)(b) and (c) of the Defamation Act 1996106. 126. Morland J held that the defendant was not “author, editor or publisher” of the statement complained of, in terms of s.1(1)(a) of the Act, so the issue boiled down to the question of reasonable care under sub-section (b) and knowledge and reasonable belief under sub-section (c). The judge held on the facts that the defence could not be made out and struck out that part of the pleadings. 127. There is no statutory equivalent of subsections 1 and 2 of the Defamation Act 1996 in Hong Kong, so the law has to be developed on common law principles, within the polarity of the two rights: Freedom of expression on the one hand, and protection of reputation on the other. In this context I would unhesitatingly reject Mr Thomas’ primary submission that the respondents must be regarded as first or main publisher, attracting strict liability. Such an approach would have an unacceptable “chilling effect” on freedom of expression. I would adopt Mr Justice Ribeiro PJ’s categorization of the respondents’ role as subordinate publishers, this being a better description. The common-law defence of innocent dissemination, as developed by Romer LJ in Vizetelly (see para. 121 above), is available to the respondents, as the two courts below have found. 106 “Responsibility for publication (1) In defamation proceedings a person has a defence if he shows that – (a) he was not the author, editor or publisher of the statement complained of, (b) he took reasonable care in relation to its publication, and (c) he did not know, and had no reason to believe, that what he did caused or contributed to the publication of a defamatory statement.” It should be noted that for the defence to succeed (a) and (b) and (c) have to be established by the defendant. Section 1 continues: “(2) For this purpose…. ‘publisher’ [has] the following meanings, which are further explained in subsection (3)…. ‘publisher’ means a commercial publisher, that is, a person whose business is issuing material to the public, or a section of the public, who issues material containing the statement in the course of that business.”