Update at 11.30: There’s been more comment on this throughout the morning. The culture secretary Maria Miller is reported in this post on The Guardian to be saying the “one-man band or a single blogger” would not be affected by the legislation because of the definition of “relevant publisher” in relation to exemplary damages.

The piece goes on to say:

Miller said “student and not-for-profit community newspapers” will not be caught under the new rules and that “scientific journals, periodicals and book publishers will also be left outside the definition and therefore not exposed to the exemplary damages and costs regime”

Thanks to @gazthejourno on Twitter for sending through a link to the full document if you want to read up on it…….and we’re expecting Tom Watson MP to pop by here this afternoon to add his thoughts. In the meantime there’s a poll on this issue now running here http://www.facebook.com/n0ticenearby.

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The straight answer to that question is that nobody actually knows yet but there’s a great deal of confusion around the whole issue because the wording refers to websites which have some news content.

One of the key definitions highlighted here says a ‘relevant publisher’ includes:

“a website containing news-related material (whether or not related to a newspaper of magazine)” Read more