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EU Court Holds News Website Liable For Readers' Comments
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."
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.
This is not EU law, it is the ECHR which relates to the Convention on Human Rights - a separate body from the EU...
"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.)
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.
you do not have to show that you believed it was true, they have to show that you knew it was false
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.
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.