Summary

The Internet is a rapidly developing area, which the legislator is not able to keep up with. The law in force contains several conditions that are difficult or impossible to apply in the protection of reputation or good name in the Internet. For this reason, new regulation or a different application of traditional law is called for. In the Internet environment, a decision should be made which aspect of the personal identity is to be protected – either the real life or virtual identity. If defamation occurs in the Internet, the group of persons communicating via the Internet should be evaluated in order to determine the beliefs and values valid in the society. It should also be determined what qualifies as the communication of defamatory information in the Internet. A separate group of problems is related to the concept of public figures. The traditional approach allows regarding all persons communicating via the Internet as public figures thus depriving them of protection against defamation. It should be determined whether a person whose web site refers to a site publishing defamatory data is also liable to defamation. Procedure law problems are created by the anonymity of Internet users, as it makes it difficult to find the defendant. The author analyses these problems from different aspects and suggests possible solutions.