EU Court Holds News Website Liable For Readers' Comments

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EU Court Holds News Website Liable For Readers' Comments

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 10, 2013 @09:27PM from the sticks-and-stones dept.

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."

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Nice! by nospam007 · 2013-10-10 21:32 · 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.
1. Re:Nice! by JeffHavens · 2013-10-10 22:05 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Wow, idiocy is spreading to other courts around the world.
2. Re:Nice! by stenvar · 2013-10-10 22:21 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  It's not "spreading" when you observe it where it originated.
3. Re:Nice! by jareth-0205 · 2013-10-10 23:08 · 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?
4. Re:Nice! by Tore+S+B · 2013-10-10 23:12 · Score: 3, 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.
  
  --
  toresbe
5. Re:Nice! by skovnymfe · 2013-10-10 23:26 · 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.
6. Re:Nice! by kartaron · 2013-10-10 23:50 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Actually, by definition they are being held accountable for giving the public an area to express their opinion on the content of their publication. There is a difference. The court should have had to prove the comments are somehow supported instead of assuming that since the comments weren't censored. No sane person could interpret a comments section of an online news publication to be sponsored, factually accurate or even impartial. The comments sections are cesspools because the opinions of the general populace (at least those who need to comment on news publication sites) are chaotic. To hold the newspaper responsible is to believe the newspaper itself encouraged some particular (negative) response. Going beyond that, how was anyone damaged? Would anyone here make business or even personal decisions because 'Anonymous Coward' said "Business Alpha Trinkets is a terrible business that stole my money and gave me no trinkets"? Would that change if a user named Alphatrinketssucks had said it instead? The answer is no. The answer is no because we generally have no respect for the random musings of random internet users because of the longstanding tradition of trolls, flamebaiters, morons and lunatics on the web. They are everywhere. Slashdot, a site where moderation of comments is celebrated around the web, is full of innuendo and accusations against any number of international businesses and individuals. none of which do any harm at all because the people reading the comments dont pay any more heed to the comment than the fact that it is one person's opinion, and maybe not even a particularly well reasoned one. Freedom should win out in this case. Freedom always serves the public better than control.
7. Re: Nice! by techprophet · 2013-10-11 00:07 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Asphalt?
8. Re:Nice! by Somebody+Is+Using+My · 2013-10-11 01:28 · Score: 4, 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
9. Re:Nice! by AmiMoJo · 2013-10-11 02:21 · 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.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
10. Re:Nice! by angel'o'sphere · 2013-10-11 03:04 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Insightful? A court upholding the law is idiocy? The site should have removed the infringing comments and be done with it ...
  
  --
  Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
11. Re:Nice! by squiggleslash · 2013-10-11 03:50 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Is this response to me, or just something you wanted to get off your chest? Because if the former, then there's absolutely no assertion you're making that has any relevence whatsoever to anything I assumed, wrote, or implied.
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
This is not EU law... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-10 21:37 · 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...
1. Re:This is not EU law... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-10 23:04 · Score: 0, Insightful
  
  Still a European court, and euro politicians are "outraged" (wink wink, nudge nudge) over the NSA, but have no problem with its inept courts! You might as well say you cannot comment ever, because even if the comment is thoughtful someone asshole will complain and file a suit because they found it insulting.
  Hell that means slashdot is finished. Who will be the first jerk to complain and sue slashdot?
No freedom of speech in Europe by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-10 21:38 · Score: 1, 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.
1. Re:No freedom of speech in Europe by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-10 21:51 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  "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 the website operator.)
2. Re:No freedom of speech in Europe by NoKaOi · 2013-10-10 22:00 · Score: 3, 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.
3. Re:No freedom of speech in Europe by enrevanche · 2013-10-10 22:23 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  you do not have to show that you believed it was true, they have to show that you knew it was false
Re:Not just the USA anymore by stenvar · 2013-10-10 22:22 · Score: 1, Insightful

Where do you think these batshit crazy ideas come from in the first place? Not the US...
Re:No it doesn't. by enrevanche · 2013-10-10 22:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's almost always about those with power silencing those without. It really has very little to do with culture. In the U.S. this is usually done with volume because the powerful are stuck with the Constitution. They would have changed things via regulare legislation along time ago if they could have. One thing important to consider is that the preferred way to get people to shut up is via self censorship, either fear of legal prosecution or exasperation because of a sense of powerlessness.
Seriously? by sirwired · 2013-10-10 23:37 · 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.
1. Re:Seriously? by Tore+S+B · 2013-10-11 01:05 · Score: 1, 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.
  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 that they have skilled journalists choosing what is fit to print. And this is why editors are public figures.
  
  But there's better ways to prevent that than holding newspapers legally liable for comment content.
  Yes, but they are not liable because incentivizing responsibility us a good way to deal with bile, they are liable for the content because their editor is publishing it on their site, a point which bears making.
  
  --
  toresbe
Re:Very informative piece of info at the bottom by garutnivore · 2013-10-11 00:08 · Score: 1, Insightful

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.