The Daily Telegraph Friday, April 5, 1996: page 29
Peterborough
Edited by David Rennie

Caught in a web of curiosity

TO DATE, regulating the Internet does not seem to [be] high on the Prime Minister's list of priorities. Something tells me it may be moving up the list, sharpish. For until earlier this week, it emerges, the now-defunct magazine Scallywag had its own "website" on the Internet. This included an untruthful and libellous article concerning the PM and Miss Clare Latimer, the fashionable London caterer.
It was this article that provoked John Major into launching a libel action against the rag: it ended with Scallywag making an undertaking to the court never to repeat the libel again. Republishing the piece would be contempt of court, punishable by imprisonment. Yet, until the site was hastily suppressed by the Internet rental company Demon on Wednesday, anyone who typed in the address http://www.demon.co.uk/xyz/Scallywag/ could access the whole grisly piece.
"This was an unofficial page put there by a private individual who put up a number of pages," insists Clifford Stanford, managing director of Demon Internet Services, whose space played host to the site. "As soon as we became aware of this, within the hour it was an ex-site."
Curiously enough, when the site first appeared, it was accompanied by an Internet announcement, which read "Scallywag magazine would like to thank everyone at Demon Internet Services for their kind assistance." Stanford assures me that "if there was a notice it was unilateral."
"We don't read files," he concludes. "We just provide the service. I don't feel we have anything to apologise for." I only hope the Prime minister agrees.