Web posts may be viewed by thousands, if not millions of people, over the entire globe for an indefinite period of time. Assuming an article or other work is defamatory in nature, theoretically, every click by a user would republish the article anew, beginning an endless cycle of retriggering the statute of limitations and a multiplicity of suits.
Indeed, this year, a British newspaper, The Times, petitioned the European Court of Human Rights to overturn a British court ruling that allowed a libel suit to proceed based on the lower court’s ruling stating that each click on a 15-month-old online news article was a new publication under the so-called multiple publication rule.
