Take 10: 24 July 2026

Welcome back to RPC's Media and Communications law update where we recap on the key media judgments and developments over the last few months.

"Article 10.1: Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."

Jurisdictional challenge to harassment claim refused

In IdeaSoft and Others v Kolomiets [2026] EWHC 1775 (KB), the High Court declined to strike out the Claimant's harassment claim, despite recognising that the alleged victims were all outside the jurisdiction and that there is a significant line of High Court authority which indicates that harm or other impact caused by harassment contrary to section 1(1) of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (PHA 1997) must be felt within the jurisdiction. Mr Justice Linden considered that the Claimants had a real prospect of successfully arguing that these authorities were incorrectly decided, on the basis that the approach to territorial effect in criminal law tends to require only that a "substantial measure" of the activities constituting a crime took place in England, and the same approach should arguably be applied to civil harassment claims, since both criminal and civil liability are founded on the PHA 1997. Linden J therefore left the question to the trial judge to decide, based on a full analysis of the evidence and decision as to whether harassment had occurred at all, leaving open the possibility of future appeal to the Court of Appeal. RPC acts for the Defendant.

Beware of unfair headlines

The Court of Appeal handed down judgment in Vince v Associated Newspapers Limitedlast week. The case concerned an article published under headline "Labour repays £100,000 to "sex harassment" donor" and which included two photographs of Mr Vince at a Just Stop Oil protest. The text of the article made clear that Mr Vince was not the 'sex harassment donor' referred to in the headline. Vince, whose libel claim had already been struck out on the grounds of Charleston v NGN , claimed that the article was a breach of the fairness principle pursuant to Article 5(1)(a) UK GDPR because it was misleading to readers who only read the headline and saw the photographs. Mr Justice Swift had previously struck out Vince's second claim on the grounds of Charleston and that the claim was an abuse of process as Vince had already sued on the same facts in the libel claim. However, the Court of Appeal allowed Vince's appeal and granted summary judgment in his favour; whilst it did not lay down a general test for fairness under the UK GDPR (noting that fairness is in itself dependent on context), it found that the rule in Charleston did not apply in this case because Clause 1 of the IPSO Editor's Code of Practice requires publishers to "take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text" (though an IPSO complaint under Clause 1 had already been rejected). The court found that the juxtaposition of the headline and photographs of Vince was unfair to him and misleading to anyone who did not read the entire article. More generally, it found that the "view expressed in some authorities that the Charleston principle is applicable to a claim for inaccurate data processing cannot be read across to a claim for unfair processing" [13]. The Court also held that, adopting a "broad, merits-based judgment" including considering that ANL was a "seasoned litigant with access to highly specialised solicitors and counsel" [54], this second claim did not amount to an abuse of process. Whilst the judgment in this case was very fact-specific, editorial lawyers should be wary of enhanced scrutiny on headlines and photographs in articles, and that 'fairness' may become the new 'accuracy' in pre-action complaints. RPC acts for Associated Newspapers Limited. 

Ofcom publishes Register of Categorised Services

On 10 July 2026, Ofcom published its register of categorised services, confirming which online services fall into Category 1, 2A and 2B under the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA) and are therefore subject to additional duties under the OSA. The thresholds for each category are set out in secondary legislation and focus on the number of monthly active UK users and service features (including the use of a "content recommender system" and whether users can forward/share content with other users). Category 1 services are subject to the most stringent additional duties, including duties to give users a choice about whether to verify their identity and control the type of content they see, and duties to protect certain types of content, including journalistic and news publisher content. Under s.167 OSA, services have one month to appeal against categorisation to the Upper Tribunal. Read more in our blog. 

High Court hands down preliminary issues judgment in Kaur v Fox  

Mr Justice Linden has handed down judgment on the preliminary issues in Narinder Kaur's libel claim against Laurence Fox, the former actor and leader of the Reclaim party. The Court considered the meaning of 18 tweets by Fox, and whether they were defamatory at common law. The Defendant submitted that allegations about sexual behaviour (here, selling intimate images for money) are not necessarily sufficient to lower a person in the estimation of right-thinking people in the modern world, applying Brown v Bower [2017] EWHC 2637. The judge found that 10 of the 18 tweets were defamatory at common law, principally on the basis that they contained allegations which attacked Kaur's integrity, for example by alleging she was hypocritical or deceptive. Two of the tweets were also defamatory as they suggested that Kaur had low sexual morals.  Kaur's claim also involves misuse of private information, breach of data protection rights and harassment.

High Court hands down judgment in "Barge-Gate" drawing line on what constitutes "personal or household activities" under UK GDPR

On 17 July 2026 Mrs Justice Hill handed down judgment in Phillips v Oloffs [2026] EWHC 1821 granting the defendant reverse summary judgment on claims for harassment, breach of confidence and misuse of private information brought against him. However, Hill J allowed the claim for breach of UK GDPR to proceed and dismissed that aspect of the defendant's strike out application. In a dispute between ex-Greenwich Yacht Club members the defendant alleged that the claimant had received "preferential treatment" for the fees he paid to moor his barge.

In respect of the GDPR claim, the defendant attempted to rely on the Article 2(2)(a) exception, which states that Article 4(2) of the GDPR does not apply to "the processing of personal data by an individual in the course of a purely personal or household activity". Hill J accepted this argument in relation to the messages that the defendant had posted on WhatsApp and Facebook. However, she said that the claimant has a realistic prospect of arguing at trial that the statements on the website (set up by the defendant and titled "Barge-Gate") do not fall into this exception following the CJEU ruling Lindqvist (Case C 101/01) (2003). Notably, Hill J explained that her provisional view is that "litigating this claim alone, rather than the full suite of claims initially advanced by the Claimant, does amount to a Jameel abuse", but she allowed the parties the opportunity to make further submissions on the issue before her final decision on that issue. 

Online safety: Ofcom updates on age assurance

On 15 July 2026, Ofcom published a report on the use of age assurance checks across the tech industry, declaring in its accompanying press statement that "the job is not done". The report comes almost a year after the duty to protect children from harm under section 12 OSA came into force, which includes the duty to have highly effective age assurance (HEAA) measures for user-to-user services within the remit of the OSA. The report found that whilst all 32 companies under analysis used at least one form of age assurance methods set out in Ofcom's HEAA Guidance, and the methods had been effective in deterring children from accessing pornography sites, there was evidence that children were seeking to circumvent the age assurance measures and that there had not been a material reduction in the volume of harmful content being surfaced to children. Ofcom suggested that this may be because a number of platforms choose to rely on age inference methods, where users declare their age upon access to the service and their age is subsequently inferred from their activity on the service, and that children were using VPNs (the use of which has increased since age assurance obligations came into force). You can read more about this and what else is to come from Ofcom in this area on our blog. 

SRA withdraws appeal against Carter-Ruck Partner

Further to our previous reporting, the appeal against the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal's (SDT) summary dismissal of a SLAPP-related professional misconduct proceedings against Carter-Ruck Partner Claire Gill has now been withdrawn by the SRA. Notably, in February 2026, prior to the withdrawal and save for three interim applications, the SDT ordered the SRA to pay Ms Gill's costs "in principle" incurred from 2 May 2025 onwards and subject to a detailed assessment on the standard basis, unless otherwise agreed with no interim payment ordered. Ms Gill had initially applied for costs to be assessed summarily seeking around £1 million, which the SRA argued would have a "chilling effect" on the delivery of its regulatory functions. The SRA has also agreed to pay £85,794 in appeal related costs. 

Lord Justice Warby appointed as President of the King's Bench Division

The Right Honourable Lord Justice Warby has been appointed as President of the King’s Bench Division. Formerly a leading practitioner at the media bar at 5RB, Lord Justice Warby was previously the Judge who oversaw the creation of the Media and Communications List before his appointment to the Court of Appeal in 2020. His decisions have shaped media law in the modern era, interpreting the Defamation Act 2013 and shaping data and privacy litigation in the modern era, with landmark decisions including Lachaux v Independent Print [2016] EWHC 1853 (QB), Lloyd v Google LLC [2018] EWHC 2599 (QB), Economou v de Freitas [2016] EWHC 1853 (QB) and NT1 & NT2 v Google LLC [2018] EHWC 799. In addition to continuing to sit on the Court of Appeal, as President, Lord Justice Warby will oversee cases in the Division and allocate Judges. He will replace another celebrated media judge, Dame Victoria Sharp, who retires in October 2026 after over seven years in post.

Ofcom consultations on video-on-demand and further online safety duties

A reminder that Ofcom's consultations on the Tier 1 Standards Code and the Tier 1 Accessibility Code regulating content on video-on-demand services are both closing on 7 August 2026, as previously reported by Take 10 here. If implemented, the Code will regulate content on Tier 1 services (i.e. on-demand programme services with more than an average of 500,000 monthly UK users), in a similar way to traditional broadcasters under Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

Additionally, at the same time as publishing the register of categorised services (see above), Ofcom has launched a consultation on the additional duties applicable to Category 1 services,  including a Draft Additional Duties Code of Practice for Category 1 Services. The consultation closes on 2 October 2026.

CJEU rules on the scope of the hosting exemption under the E-Commerce Directive

On 16 July 2026, the CJEU ruled that online intermediaries entering into commercial partnerships with content creators may not rely on the hosting exemption under the E-Commerce Directive where they review the creator's content before entering into the partnership. Where an operator reviews a creator’s channel and content as part of deciding whether to grant a commercial partnership (for example, checking the channel’s theme, its most viewed or newest videos, and metadata), it acquires specific knowledge of the essential content of a set of videos and cannot claim to act as a neutral intermediary. Crucially, this applies regardless of whether the review process is automated or carried out by an individual. Following the decision, platforms that review, monetise or control the distribution of particular content face an increased risk that they will be treated as primary publishers rather than neutral hosts.

Quote of the fortnight

"We can, I think, take judicial notice of the fact that many readers do not read further than headlines and pictures… For these reasons, the applicability (or otherwise) of the Charleston principle in this case is of great importance."

Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls, in Vince v Associated Newspapers Limited [2026] EWCA Civ 899 at [57].