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European Court: Websites Are Responsible For Users' Comments
An anonymous reader writes: A new ruling from the European Court of Human Rights found it perfectly acceptable to hold websites responsible for comments left by users. Experts are worried the ruling will encourage websites to censor content posted by users out of concern that they're opening themselves up to legal liability. The judgment also seems to support the claim that "proactive monitoring" can be required of website owners. Peter Micek of digital rights group "Access" said, "This ruling is a serious blow to users' rights online. Dissenting voices will have fewer outlets in which to seek and impart opinions anonymously. Instead, users at risk will be dragged down by a precedent that will keep them from accessing the open ocean of ideas and information."
I would think this would be beneficial for trolls/assholes/etc. You could pretty much just say whatever the fuck you wanted to and let the website get in trouble or force the website to enforce some stricter policies.
I am sure there is no lack of smart and highly educated people, but you can not have innovation without a high degree of freedom. Imagine running Facebook or Twitter under these kind of laws. The tragedy is that US laws can be easily improved on by a country that wants to be in forefront of technology. Certainly a country motivated to become tech center of the world can respect privacy much more than NSA.
"He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe." - Tom Wolfe, 'The Intelligent Coed's Guide to America'
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Still comments need to be separated in the three distinct classes of comment, threats, intent to deceive for gain and opinions.
The claim that forums can monitor all comments is intent by that court in the most corrupt fashion imaginable to silence all forums that can not 'AFFORD' full time comment regulators to read and evaluate every comment, this with the express intent of purposefully creating a price barrier for commenting.
This to shut down all public forums in favour of empty propaganada forums that just pretend to be public as they are fully funded with the express intent of censoring all comments that do not adhere to corporate message. The European court Human Rights actively working to deny the right of 'FREE' speech and ensure only 'PAID' speech is allowed on public media channels, because factually it needs to be 'PAID' in order to be professionally moderated.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Thus proving you're free to say anything you like! ... as long as they agree with it. Otherwise you're a dissenter, and nuisance, and in breach of disturbing the peace online. Well, I'd make sure my website was hosted in a "free" country, and argue that EU has no jurisdiction there. So naff off! Way to encourage IT in the EU! People should be able to say what they want. Freedom of speech should be an unalienable right if you ask me.
Uh, you know this is a local Estonian law, right? The ruling is basically that their local law is compatible with European human rights. All it means is that individual European countries can pass laws like this and they won't be struck down under current human rights rules, but they may still be incompatible with other rules such as EU rules on telecommunications.
It's actually a shame they didn't appeal under telecoms rules because they would have won. For some legal reason I don't really understand (I'm not an expert on Estonian legal procedure) they went to the ECHR instead.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The European Court of Human Rights is not actually an EU institution, regardless of the similarities in naming. It's more like a court that countries submit to
voluntarily. I saw quite an interesting presentation about it from some human rights lawyers a year or two ago. Apparently it does some good work, especially in addressing more run-of-the-mill rights violations in former Soviet bloc countries.
Regardless, this is now the second time that some EU court has fucked up extremely basic internet related rulings. First there was the idiotic "right to be forgotten" ruling that makes it effectively impossible for anyone to make a search engine unless they have a vast human army of lawyers and money for lawsuits. Now they want to make websites responsible for everyone who comments on them? Like someone who runs a party should be responsible for anything anyone says whilst there?
It's quite clear that the judges at this place must either be interpreting extremely vague and piss poor laws, or have never used the internet, or both.
At the moment the Tory government in the UK is wanting to pull out of the ECHR, partly because it keeps blocking deportation of various 'undesirables' on the grounds of their right to a family life. They want to replace it with a British-specific bill of human rights. I don't really trust the Tories on this matter, their track record of upholding civil liberties is pretty terrible lately, but every time the ECHR produces a disastrous ruling like this I think - you know, maybe there's something in it.
I don't have easy access to the raw stats, so here's some relevant news stories that do quote some stats. I doubt that the stats are cherry-picked as there's such a clear difference between the US and the rest of the world:
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-kill-citizens-70-times-rate-first-world-nations/
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/08/armed-police/
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-do-us-police-kill-so-many-people-2014-8/
http://mic.com/articles/105036/here-s-the-shocking-tally-of-how-many-americans-die-from-police-shootings/
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
See my comment here: http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
Roughly and in terms of English law, the ECtHR ruling upheld the Estonian Supreme Court's ruling (and that of several Estonian courts) that "L" was defamed, and that Delfi AS exacerbated the defamation by its actions, incurring a small liability for damages. Delfi admits there was the equivalent of defamation in the comments and that they were fairly treated in the Estonian court of first instance, in terms of procedure. Its argument that the Estonian law on defamation is in conflict with the ECHR has been rejected by almost everyone who has heard the case. I'd be strongly surprised if their advocates at every stage had not suggested to them that they did not have clean enough hands in the matter to pursue it through the courts with hope of success.
The ruling is not a disaster, IMHO. It tries to strike a balance for protecting the general rights of freedom of communication with the general protections from lies that are calculated to injure the reputation (and/or income and/or quiet enjoyment of life without fear), and to make striking such balances in more local courts and legislatures easier.
In brutal terms, the quantum of damages assessed by the court of first instance against Delfi was very small -- a mere slap on the wrist -- and the ECtHR took that tiny figure into account in considering the reasonabless of the law and its application. Other courts should too. Nobody went to prison, lost their business, or the like. Delfi consequently should pay costs in the appeal -- they insisted on their right to have their day in court on a small matter, and lost.
Finally, since you ask in another comment below, this would not in any way prevent someone assessed a much more severe quantum of damages (or fines, incarceration or other punitive measures) even in similar circumstances from pursuing relief through the courts, including the ECtHR. Such a person could indeed point to this case in the first instance and likely achieve a better outcome than they would have absent this decision. That's why I say it's not a disaster, not even for free speech enthusiasts. Indeed, there are some newspaper publishers in England who likely will be wishing this ruling had been made before being pressured into a deal with the late coalition government on similar matters.