Editing Defamation (section)

===United Kingdom===
{{See also|Libel Act|McLibel case}}

The United Kingdom abolished criminal libel on 12 January 2010 by section 73 of the ''[[Coroners and Justice Act 2009]]''.<ref>{{cite legislation UK|type=act |year=2009 |chapter=25 |act=Coroners and Justice Act 2009}}</ref> There were only a few instances of the criminal libel law being applied. Notably, the Italian anarchist [[Errico Malatesta]] was convicted of criminal libel for denouncing the Italian state agent Ennio Belelli in 1912.

Under [[English common law]], proving the truth of the allegation was originally a valid defence only in civil libel cases. Criminal libel was construed as an offence against the public at large based on the tendency of the libel to provoke [[breach of peace]], rather than being a crime based upon the actual defamation ''per se''; its veracity was therefore considered irrelevant. Section 6 of the ''[[Libel Act 1843]]'' allowed the proven truth of the allegation to be used as a valid defence in criminal libel cases, but only if the defendant also demonstrated that publication was for the "public benefit".<ref>{{Cite book  | last = Folkard | first = Henry Coleman  | title = The Law of Slander and Libel  | publisher = Butterworth & Co. | year = 1908  | location = London  | page = [https://archive.org/details/lawslanderandli00stargoog/page/n514 480]  | url = https://archive.org/details/lawslanderandli00stargoog| quote = public benefit. }}</ref>