Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal definition of defamation and related acts as well as the ways they are dealt with can vary greatly between countries and jurisdictions (what exactly they must consist of, whether they constitute crimes or not, to what extent proving the alleged facts is a valid defence). Defamation laws can encompass a variety of acts: Insult against a legal person in general Defamation against a legal person in general Acts against public officials Acts against state institutions (e.g., government, ministries, government agencies, armed forces) Acts against state symbols Acts against the state itself Acts against religions (e.g., blasphemy, discrimination) Acts against the judiciary or legislature (e.g., contempt of court, censure) History Defamation law has a long history stretching back to classical antiquity. While defamation has been recognized as an actionable wrong in various forms across historical legal systems and in various moral and religious philosophies, defamation law in contemporary legal systems can primarily be traced back to Roman and early English law. Roman law, which forms the basis for contemporary civil and mixed law legal systems, aimed to provide society with sufficient scope for the discussion of an individual's character while protecting individuals from unnecessary insult and pain. The primary remedy for verbal defamation was long confined to a civil action for a monetary penalty calculated with regard to the significance of the defamatory statement serving both to vindicate the defamed party's reputation and to provide compensation for any damages incurred as a result of the statement, but a new remedy was introduced with the extension of the criminal law under which many kinds of defamation were punished with great severity. At the same time, increased importance attached to the publication of defamatory books and writings, the libri or libelli famosi, from which is derived the modern use of the word libel, and, under the later emperors the latter term came to be specially applied to anonymous accusations or pasquils, the dissemination of which was regarded as particularly dangerous and visited with very severe punishment whether the matters contained in them were true or false. The Praetorian Edict, codified circa AD 130, declared that an action could be brought up