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."
Nice! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we can insult ourselves with anonymous posts and then sue the posting site for 500$.
Nospam007 you are moron!
Ooops, forgot to click the 'Post anonymously' checkbox.
Re:Nice! (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not "spreading" when you observe it where it originated.
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Insightful? A court upholding the law is idiocy? The site should have removed the infringing comments and be done with it ...
Re:Nice! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, idiocy is spreading to other courts around the world.
Why? Moderation of comments isn't difficult.
Until you have 10 comments a minute. Or 100. Or 1000? Do you want to also pay for your ability to comment?
Re:Nice! (Score:5, Insightful)
We're already paying for our ability to comment on Slashdot. Granted it's not in dollars, but in the collective effort and time spent down-voting bad comments and up-voting good ones.
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We're already paying for our ability to comment on Slashdot. Granted it's not in dollars, but in the collective effort and time spent down-voting bad comments and up-voting good ones.
...in a country that doesn't require you to be legally responsible for their content. Want to be?
Re:Nice! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, can I sue anyone who downvotes me now, or everyone who doesn't upvote me? Or everyone who doesn't downvote a negative comment about me? Or anyone who upvotes a negative comment about me?
Man, I'm moving to Estonia. Because not only will I get rich by suing commenters, a country with a name like that must have free drugs everywhere.
Re:Nice! (Score:5, Funny)
a country with a name like that must have free drugs everywhere.
Well if logic works that way then I am moving to Jabooty (Djibouti)!
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down-voting bad comments and up-voting good ones.
Oh how you made me laugh!
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Yup, and at this rate the issues should be totally settled and we can stop, in another decade or two....
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Comments are a source of income to newspapers, because it causes repeat traffic to the same articles.
Whether or not it is profitable is a concern for the newspaper, not everyone else.
Re:Nice! (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you want to also pay for your ability to comment?
Indeed, the addition of moderation to a discussion may also have a cost beyond the purely financial.
While moderation can work against egregious trolls and spammers, fear of moderation can also cause people not to post their true thoughts and opinions for fear of going against the accepted groupthink of the forum. Especially since most forums "moderate" by outright censoring the offensive comments (e.g., they delete it entirely)*. Those with differing opinions will not involve themselves in the conversation. This can result in an echo-chamber effect, and severely limits critical thought in a discussion.
Of course, this may be the unconscious goal of the people who pass laws like the one in question. Free discussion and critical thought about issues - whether it is the Prime Minister's latest decisions or whether a ferry-operator was working for the best interests of a community - is not to their advantage.
*Props to Slashdot. Worthy comments are sometimes moderated down for going against the forum's common grain, but at least they are still visible to those willing to take the time to look for them amongst the muck of trolls, goatse links and spammers
Re:Nice! (Score:5, Insightful)
No need to pre-moderate every post. All the court is saying is that some effort must be made to take down offensive comments.
Most sites already do this, especially popular ones that would be vulnerable to crap flooding if they didn't do anything to prevent it. Slashdot limits the rate at which you can post, other sites require you to sign up and sometimes ban IP addresses that spew spam.
All the court is saying is that if you enable comments on your site you need to at least have some mechanism by which people can get them reviewed and if appropriate removed. As usual this being an EU story it gets blown out of all proportion.
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Right, I've noticed Slashdot has a *huge* anti-EU bias.
Really, this line of discussion doesn't change anything. Whether websites want to protect against crap flooding, or how easy it is to moderate a discussion board, is an entirely different issue than if sites should be fined due to the postings of anonymous commentators. No court should have the right to say people can't be offensive in internet comments.
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You Americans consider the freedom of speech a little too literally. If I were to claim that you are a proven pedophile all over the interwebs (let's say I have a good influence over there), I would be liable under French law - if you're not a pedophile that is. And I don't expect anything else from the law. If I claimed on national television I have proof that the new GM car can be fatal to kids under 5, their stock would plummet (again, assuming I have some kind of legitimacy on the subject) and I would b
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You completely whooshed the point. Yes, you personally should be legally responsible for your libelous posts. The open, unmoderated forum you posted in should not.
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Slashdot in 2015: "Pay 100 satoshis to post your comment or 150 satoshis to post your comment with a +1 mod."
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Does the ruling open the possibility that the comment does not need to be anonymous?
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).
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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You called it a bad ruling, so you implied it was bad.
However it is a correct ruling and I pointed out why.
There are no bad rulings, only correct and incorrect ones.
Re:Nice! (Score:4, Insightful)
No; what this does is hold newspaper editors legally responsible as editors for what they choose to include in their publication.
This is more likely to mean that anonymity (unless explicitly agreed in advance) in the comments fields will disappear.
This is a Good Thing, because those fields are cesspools, and online papers show little to no interest in preventing that. As long as they can have the angry idiots coming back to vent their spleen, they get ad revenue.
Essentially, the courts have forced newspapers to act more like journalistic institutions and less like businesses. I'm totally down with that.
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the comments are clearly delineated from editorial content, I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to hold the paper responsible for the content of the comments. (Not to mention that holding a newspaper liable under human rights laws for "offensive" speech would be laughed out of nearly any court in the US. That wouldn't stop some clowns from trying, or a particularly brain-addled judge from occasionally issuing an injunction, but it'd never stick.)
Yes, the comments of many news websites are worthless cesspools of scum and villainy. But there's better ways to prevent that than holding newspapers legally liable for comment content.
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How do you figure comments differ from the opinion column of newspapers, which have always very much been the editor's responsibility?
Newspapers are fundamentally different from forums like Slashdot or Reddit - they have a well-defined role in society not as bulletin boards, but as authorities, and part of why that is, is exactly tha
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If the newspaper is using the comments to sell its product then it should bare some responsibility for their content. In the case of a website the product is the reader, sold to advertisers, and the comments attract people to the site who wish to express their opinions or who wish to read other people's.
Comments are a difficult area, legally speaking. They add value to a site but also come in from 3rd parties. The site publishes them, which from a court's point of view usually makes it liable in the same wa
Re:Nice! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Freedom should win out in this case. Freedom always serves the public better than control.
There is always a problem with absolute statements like that. How about the freedom to kill someone you don't agree with? The freedom to drive any speed you want in any area? The freedom to walk into a bank and withdraw money you don't own? There are many freedoms that are curtailed in the public interest.
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Re:Nice! (Score:5, Funny)
You swine. You vulgar little maggot. Don't you know that you are pathetic? You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas, I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.
You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you. You are a bloody nardless newbie twit protohominid chromosomally aberrant caricature of a coprophagic cloacal parasitic pond scum and I wish you would go away.
You're a putrescence mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.
You are a bleating fool, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done.
I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?
If you aren't an idiot, you made a world-class effort at simulating one. Try to edit your writing of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.
You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.
You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.
And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?
You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.
On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.
I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original
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..I think you have your continents mixed up.
because in Europe you can still have massive protests without the police coming to beat up everyone, the french do it regularly.
What this means probably though is that anon comments will be disabled in Estonia(or systems put in place where even the rest of the sites are put on a system where the comments are reviewed before publishing, that however makes the comments useless for catching juicy new information on the subject. such staff review is quite common with
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As other people here have mentioned, the legal concept used by the court is self-defeating and doomed to fail, sooner or later.
Re: Nice! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Grassroots.
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Crab Grass.
This is not EU law... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not EU law, it is the ECHR which relates to the Convention on Human Rights - a separate body from the EU...
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Still not a done deal as this verdict can be appealed within a span of three months.
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:This is not EU law... (Score:5, Funny)
Estonian law holds news website liable for comments. The European court has ruled that Estonian law does not breach the human rights conventions.
Why don't YOU write summaries?
Oh, wait, that would increase their quality. I apologize for putting forward such a preposterous idea.
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To be fair, they just quoted the Computerworld article, news organizations are copying each others' mistakes all the time. And a lot of people over on this side of the pond confuse the European Court of Human Rights with the European Union. It's all "bloody Europe, they should mind their own business" round here.
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This is an important distinction you make. The ECHR did not hold new websites liable for readers' comments, as the title would have you believe. It merely ruled that a national law (Estonian in this case) that did so was not in violation of human rights.
This means that websites in other European countries that recognize the authority of the ECHR will not be need to worry about this unless there is a similar national law in place.
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It also means that other European countries that recognize th authority of the ECHR have now been given the go-ahead to pass such laws without fear of interference by the ECHR.
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Hell that means slashdot is finished. Who will be the first jerk to complain and sue slashdot?
I'm putting my money on APK. He gets insulted practically every time he posts, and frequently when he doesn't post, too.
Of course, there's the flip side in that he posts scads of insults in virtually every post he makes, too, so it could go either way.
Not just the USA anymore (Score:2, Interesting)
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All organs of the State are doing glorious work.
I will not longer recall http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/spy-scandal-german-intelligence-officers-detained-in-kosovo-a-592298.html [spiegel.de]
and have already forgotten http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2434435/Ministry-Defence-urged-make-repatriation-ceremonies-low-key-reduce-body-bag-syndrome.html [dailymail.co.uk]
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Or: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7965100/Murdered-British-spy-mystery-over-how-GCHQ-worker-was-killed.html [telegraph.co.uk]
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Where do you think these batshit crazy ideas come from in the first place? Not the US...
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The editor legally responsible for what their paper prints. This is a perfectly logical extension of that.
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I don't like the ruling and what it could mean for public forums but... I get the argument.
Lets say I invited some friends around to make up some posters that I would later display in a public place on my property. I go out and prepare the fence and I leave my friends to make up the posters. I later claim I was wearing a blind fold when I put them up
Blindfolded? What is the point of invoking ridiculous analogies to support your position? If you can't come up with a plausible one some introspection may be required.
This isn't a neighborhood street corner context matters.
When you use the Internet you agree to deal with all of the bullshit that comes with it. You don't get to sue your ISP because you plugged in your unpatched PC and it got owned 5 minutes later.
If you make the decision you are going to read anonymous comments in a forum where anyone can
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:No it doesn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
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News sites will stop allowing comments. (Score:5, Interesting)
And nothing of value will be lost.
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Most news sites enforce some standard of ideological purity in order to keep the trollage levels down, so the comments turn into an effective echo chamber. Especially the US sites, with their liberals-vs-conservatives political divide.
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Most news sites enforce some standard of ideological purity in order to keep the trollage levels down, so the comments turn into an effective echo chamber. Especially the US sites, with their liberals-vs-conservatives political divide.
While I've never seen a news site that blatantly does so, I have noticed people tend to self-segregate; you won't see a lot of pro-Obamacare comments on Foxnews.com, nor will there be very many people supporting gun rights on HuffPo.
This is why I've made it a hobby to go to sites like that and provide a counterpoint to the choir... reactions are hilarious. It's a bit like sticking your finger in an ant mound: the next thing you know, a thousand of the little bastards are crawling all over you.
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I have the same hobby, except that most of my comments either don't make it through moderation, or are swiftly deleted. I'm very polite about it, no profanity or insults. It must just be that we frequent different sites.
Try onenewsnow.com. There's no shortage of comments referring to president 'Ombongo,' but comments questioning their frequent abuse of statistics or one-sided presentation of the news never seem to get shown.
geography education (Score:2)
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the three goobers swallowed by first the CCCP, and then N.A.Z.I Germany, and then the CCCP again. Sucked to be them for a long time.
Estonia is also the home of Piotr Skut!
Where do I comment on that ruling? (Score:2)
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If it's bad for science... (Score:5, Interesting)
If comments are bad for science, why shouldn't they be bad for everyone else?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/10/02/2059238/do-comments-on-web-pages-ruin-science [slashdot.org]
Re:If it's bad for science... (Score:4, Funny)
If you are right and comments are bad.
It's time to shut down slashdot.
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.
Fight for your right to be insulted ! (Score:2)
Looks like us sane peole should start emulating the Napoli football fans who recently staged a protest for the right to be insulted by Milan fans after said fans were banned from their own stadium for "offensive language".
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/09/italian-football-fans-abuse-milan-napoli [theguardian.com]
Fuck all these whiny pussies who want to turn the world into some sort of cotton swaddled PC playgrond for retards.
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TractorBarry is a raging homo/lesbian/paedo/other, who likes nothing more than to take advantage of vulnerable young people. he's predatory, merciless and ruthless.
TractorBarry lives at 123 Fake Street, Springfield, 90210. If you happen to be in the area, pop over and tell him how you feel about his homo/lesbian/paedo tendencies.
TractorBarry is an abomination, and will hopefully contract cancer and die really soon. He's the product of a mother who was hooked on crack and gave blowjobs to just about anyone s
Truly inappropriate (Score:2)
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.
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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.
(Bold added by me.)
Thanks for bringing this up. Their rationale for holding Delfi responsible is the same damn rationale that cheerleaders for the police state everywhere bring up, every single time. Doing the right thing would have been too hard. See, if they actually had done the right thing, they would have had to actually spend substantial effort at unmasking who actually posted anonymously. So they decided to just peg the act on a convenient actor.
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So if there was no commercial benefit, then it is OK?
How does tripadvisor get away with it then?
Look inward. (Score:2)
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Personal responsibility, how does it work? (Score:2)
Oh right, it's Europe, so you're not personally responsible, you can socialize the risk.
This doesn't go far enough (Score:2)
The Ruling (Score:3)
Here is the actual rulling [google.ca] rather than a paraphrased version. The important bit follows;
In assessing this question, the Court assessed four key issues. First, the context of the posts. The comments had been insulting, threatening and defamatory. Given the nature of the article, the company should have expected offensive posts, and exercised an extra degree of caution so as to avoid being held liable for damage to an individual’s reputation.
Second, the steps taken by Delfi to prevent the publication of defamatory comments. 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. The webpage also automatically deleted posts that contained a series of vulgar words, and users could tell administrators about offensive comments by clicking a single button, which would then lead to the posts being removed. However, the warnings failed to prevent a large number of insulting comments from being made, and they were not removed in good time by the automatic-word filtering or by the notice-and-take-down notification system.
Third, whether the actual authors of the comments could have been made liable for them. The owner of the ferry company could, in principle, have attempted to sue the specific authors of the offensive posts rather than Delfi. However, the identity of the authors would have been extremely difficult to establish, as readers were allowed to make comments without registering their names. Therefore many of the posts were anonymous. Making Delfi legally responsible for the comments was therefore practical; but it was also reasonable, because the news portal received commercial benefit from comments being made.
Finally, the court addressed the consequences of Delfi being made liable. The sanctions imposed by the Estonian courts against the company had been fairly small. Delfi was required to pay a EUR 320 fine, and the courts did not make any orders about how the portal should protect third party rights in the future in a way that might limit free speech.
Taking into account all of these points, the Court held that making Delfi liable for the comments was a justified and proportionate interference with its right to freedom of expression. There had therefore been no violation of Article 10.
Re:No freedom of speech in Europe (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly!
Nobody should be forced to be thought police.
And who is this that gets to define "offensive"? The person with the weakest skull?
Also I can't help but feel that honest opinions absolutely cannot exist without real anonymity, and so real debate on topics would effectively be squashed.
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Now I'm picturing an AI type system that reads all comments on news sites, blogs etc, and picks out the top 20 reasons why a persons comment *might* be offensive to *someone* and rejects them all offhand with the list of reasons... Then it becomes a game for the developers to make sure no comments can get through the filter. It could be applied to news sites and forums in protest (as if they would ever care to protest in favour of free speech :(
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"Offensive views" should be protected speech.
Opinions on that are divided. Most countries draw a line somewhere. Some European countries outlaws nazi propaganda, for example. The U.S. allows that, but outlaws other things: You can't publish slander - nasty lies about named persons.
The question here is, whatever the nature of the "illegal speech", should a website be held responsible for postings by users? If so, all such sites will need moderators - or they will be open to trivial and costly attacks. (I.e. someone post slander themselves and then sue
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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.
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Someone ought be [responsible]
Someone is - the person who made the comment. Grasping at straws to have someone, anyone whose ass you can pin to the wall is irresponsible and a violation of their right to not be held responsible for the actions of others.
People like you are why Jesus was crucified. Yea, that's right, I went there; suck it, Pharisee.
Re:No freedom of speech in Europe (Score:4, Insightful)
It shouldn't matter who made the comments. Even if the site themselves posted the shit on purpose, "Offensive views" should be protected speech.
The "European Court of Human Rights" doesn't seem to give a damn about Human Rights.
That really depends on what you define as a human right, and how it affects other's rights. I do agree with you, but their reasoning was (FTA) "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." In other words, it's up to the member nation as to what constitutes libel. In the US it's libelous if you know it's not true.
In the US for example, speech isn't 100% free. If something damages somebody's reputation, you better be able to show that you believed it was true or you're on the hook for libel or slander. A lot of other countries have where speech that damages reputation is considered libelous in certain circumstances even if it's true. The comments may or may not be truthful, though it sounds like there was malice behind them, and may or may not have been considered libel in the US or other countries in addition to Estonia. That's not really the big issue here because that's nothing new. The big issue is that the news site was responsible for a comment that somebody else posted. Slippery slope and all.
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.
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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.
I see, so you think it's not okay to post a news article on a website if they can expect offensive posts? And that a website operator needs to take more proactive steps than work-filter and notification by users? That pretty much means that a website operator needs to manually read every single comment or post and determine if it constitutes defamation. I wonder how big a team of lawyers it would take to make that happen on slashdot.
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The European Court of Human Rights is NOT an E.U. court.
Please get the facts straight,
Re:No freedom of speech in Europe (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up (Score:2)
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That doesn't have much to do with "free speech" per se; there are many ways in the US that saying the wrong thing can cost you money. Just like anything else, if you harm someone without cause or justification, they can recover damages from you. That isn't automatically an infringement of free speech rights. The major f
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If only that was true.
In the US, the burden of proof is on the accuser of libel, not the defendant. Meaning you have to prove that someone knew it was false and still presented it as the truth to prove libel. This is very hard to do without a paper trail.
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But look what I've found, granma that's responsible for EU's 'digital agenda' (WTF is that?) wants our views on what she calls 'Internet governance'. http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/kroes/en/content/internet-governance-i-want-your-views [europa.eu]
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There is a gap in free speech the difference between opinion and false statement of fact. The US is currently one of the few countries that maintains a distorted view of the difference and how it counts against libel and slander. In Europe couching the forums as being only the "Opinions" of commentators and not statements of fact and continually reinforcing that concept of opinions over statements of facts, gives a great degree of protection. Of course it is still far more sensible to review comments at re
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I didn't know Neelie's a grandmother. She does promote a lot of sensible things though - definitely gets marks for trying.
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Sort of like the Soviet apparatchik, nomenklatura watching over all of us
They will grind your rights and bank account down to camp dust
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Neither could I find whether they were relevant to the topic.
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Not everything that's posted on the Internet is the truth.
Blasphemy!!!!
Quick, someone grab a CAT-o-5-tails and give this lad the whippin' his motherboard shoulda!