EU Court Holds News Website Liable For Readers' Comments 246
angry tapir writes "Seven top European Union judges have ruled that a leading Internet news website is legally responsible for offensive views posted by readers in the site's comments section. The European Court of Human Rights found that Estonian courts were within their rights to fine Delfi, one of the country's largest news websites, for comments made anonymously about a news article, according to a judgment."
No it doesn't. (Score:5, Informative)
From the article:
In other words, the EU allows its nations to finetune their own interpretation of freedom of speech within certain boundaries and it ruled that the Estonian law does not violate those boundaries. This is a good thing as every country and culture values the balance of rights differently.
Re:This is not EU law... (Score:5, Informative)
Estonian law holds news website liable for comments. The European court has ruled that Estonian law does not breach the human rights conventions. Ironically, I could not comment on the Computerworld article due to a "Forbidden (403)" error.
Re:No freedom of speech in Europe (Score:4, Informative)
most of TFA:
In January 2006, Delfi published an article about a ferry company's decision to change its routes and thus delay the opening of alternative and cheaper ice roads to certain islands.
Many readers then wrote highly offensive or threatening posts about the ferry operator and its owner. The owner successfully sued Delfi in April 2006 and was awarded €320 (US$433).
Delfi argued that it was not responsible for the comments and that the fine violated E.U. freedom of expression laws. However the judges agreed that Article 10 of E.U. law allowed freedom of expression to be interfered with by national courts in order to protect a person's reputation, as long as the interference was proportionate to the circumstances.
The E.U. court decided that it was proportionate because, given the nature of the article, Delfi should have expected offensive posts and exercised an extra degree of caution.
In addition, the website did not appear to take any proactive steps to remove the defamatory and offensive comments, relying instead on automated word-filtering of certain vulgar terms or notification by users.
The article's webpage did state that the authors of comments would be liable for their content, and that threatening or insulting comments were not allowed. However, since readers were allowed to make comments without registering their names, the identity of the authors would have been extremely difficult to establish. Making Delfi legally responsible for the comments was therefore practical, said the court. It was also reasonable, because the news portal received commercial benefit from comments being made.
My takeaway: slope not slippery.
In France they take care of this (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen many news web sites, in France, that shut down the comment feature in advance for articles about subjects usually prone to racist or antisemitic comments.
I have mixed feelings about this kind of limitations, they look like full preventive cencoreship.
Sometimes they can resort to manual comment moderation for this type of subject.
Re:No freedom of speech in Europe (Score:3, Informative)
You can't publish slander - nasty lies about named persons.
Yes you can; it just needs to have the right context.
You just can't assert it as a matter of fact, but opinion.
Very informative piece of info at the bottom (Score:5, Informative)
A very interesting piece of info is at the bottom of TFA:
since readers were allowed to make comments without registering their names, the identity of the authors would have been extremely difficult to establish. Making Delfi legally responsible for the comments was therefore practical, said the court. It was also reasonable, because the news portal received commercial benefit from comments being made.
Re:Nice! (Score:5, Informative)
For the TL;DR people:
The ruling states a number of very specific conditions. I'll start with the answer your question...
-The site was held liable for the offensive comments that were made anonymously, because those comments weren't traceable back to the original authors. To hold the site liable was deemed 'practical'.
-A disclaimer of liability doesn't mean squat if you can't properly divert that liability.
-The site was found to have generated income out of the posting of those offensive comments. Therefore holding the site liable was found 'reasonable'.
-The site did not take any proactive steps to remove the offensive comments.
-Given the nature of the article, offensive comments were to be expected and the site should have taken extra care with this article, which it didn't.
The compensation of damages awarded to the plaintiff is €320 (US$433) (I didn't omit a 'K' here or something. It's just that, €320).