Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

21 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 jiriw · · 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).

    7. 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

    8. Re:Nice! by wiredog · · Score: 4, 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

      --

      Best Slashdot Co
    9. Re:Nice! by ArhcAngel · · Score: 4, 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)!

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    10. 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...

    1. Re:This is not EU law... by PhilHibbs · · 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.

    2. Re:This is not EU law... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · 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.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  3. No it doesn't. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the article:

    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.

    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.

  4. News sites will stop allowing comments. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And nothing of value will be lost.

  5. If it's bad for science... by mschaffer · · Score: 4, 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

  6. Re:No freedom of speech in Europe by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  7. In France they take care of this by advid.net · · Score: 4, 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.

  8. Very informative piece of info at the bottom by trifish · · 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.

  9. 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.