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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."

13 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 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).

    6. 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. 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.

  5. 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.