Dr. Laurence Godfrey (born 21 November 1952) was educated at the independent

The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School Haberdashers' Boys' School (also known as Haberdashers', Habs, or Habs Boys), until September 2021 known as Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, is a public school for pupils age 4 to 18 in Elstree, Hertfordshire, England. The school is a me ...

, at

Westfield College Westfield College was a small college situated in Hampstead, London, from 1882 to 1989. It was the first college to aim to educate women for University of London degrees from its opening. The college originally admitted only women as students and ...

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

(

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

Physics, first class honours, 1975) and at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

( PhD, High Energy Nuclear Physics, 1982). He established a legal precedent for

libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

, in the landmark

Godfrey v Demon Internet Service ''Godfrey v Demon Internet Service'' 001QB 201 was a landmark court case in the United Kingdom concerning online defamation and the liability of Internet service providers. Facts Laurence Godfrey—a physics lecturer—learned that someone ha ...

case. He lives in France with his younger son Waylan and is unmarried, having twice been divorced. He is self-employed ''inter alia'' as an expert witness, consultant and technical adviser in Internet-related litigation.

History

In 1993 he and

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

colleague

Phillip Hallam-Baker Phillip Hallam-Baker is a computer scientist, mostly known for contributions to Internet security, since the design of HTTP at CERN in 1992. Self-employed since 2018 as a consultant and expert witness in court cases, he previously worked at Comod ...

became immersed in a very public dispute on Usenet, which culminated in a libel action (settled out of court in Godfrey's favour). Godfrey was a regular and controversial presence to the Usenet newsgroups ''soc.culture.british'', ''soc.culture.canada'', ''soc.culture.german'' and ''soc.culture.thai''. His main topics of discourse there were the perceived and real shortcomings of the inhabitants of those countries. He launched a series of court cases including ''

''. Godfrey has used Britain's strict libel laws to bring successful libel actions, suing in British courts a number of organizations based in other countries, including

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

and the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

Libel cases

* 1995, Godfrey v. Hallam-Baker * 1997, Godfrey v. Demon Internet * 1998, Godfrey v.

/Dolenga * 1998, Godfrey v.

/Starnet/Quanchairut * 1998, Godfrey v. Melbourne PC Users Group * (unknown) Godfrey v. New Zealand TeleCom * (unknown) Godfrey v. Toronto Star

References

External links

Cornell University & Minnesota cases
story from 1998

freelance writing from 1992
Recent case in which Laurence Godfrey acted as expert/ technical consultant
his main occupation since 2001. 1952 births Living people People educated at Haberdashers' Boys' School {{UK-law-bio-stub