Recapturing Liberated Information: The Relationship between the United Kingdom's Freedom of Information Act 2000 and Private Law Restraints on Disclosure
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND HUMAN RIGHTS, P. Torremans, ed., Kluwer Publishing, 2008
16 Pages Posted: 23 Jul 2010 Last revised: 10 Aug 2010
Date Written: January 1, 2008
Abstract
Increasingly, it is understood that the ‘right to know’ plays an essential part in any democratic society. Access to information is, in some circumstances, regarded as a human right. In many countries, citizens are granted rights of access to information held by public bodies. In the United Kingdom, general access legislation, in the form of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, has been enacted. The scope of this Act is controversial in a number of respects. There is, however, a feature of the legislation that has generated little commentary; yet detracts significantly from its effectiveness as an access regime. The Act fails to regulate the potential conflict between the right of access to information and the continuing ability of individuals or bodies to employ private law rights to resist, or to sanction, disclosure. In this chapter, the extent to which rights established under the laws of defamation, confidentiality and copyright can be used to prevent the disclosure of requested information is examined.
Keywords: freedom of information, access to information, United Kingdom, Freedom of Information Act 2000, defamation, confidentiality, breach of confidence, copyright
JEL Classification: K30
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation