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EU Court Holds News Website Liable For Readers' Comments

Posted by samzenpus on 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."

10 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Nice! by nospam007 · · 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 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wow, idiocy is spreading to other courts around the world.

    2. Re:Nice! by jareth-0205 · · 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?

    3. Re:Nice! by skovnymfe · · 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.

    4. Re:Nice! by kartaron · · 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.

    5. Re: Nice! by techprophet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Asphalt?

    6. Re:Nice! by Somebody+Is+Using+My · · 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

    7. Re:Nice! by AmiMoJo · · 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
  2. This is not EU law... by Anonymous Coward · · 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...

  3. Seriously? by sirwired · · 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.