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European Court: Websites Are Responsible For Users' Comments

Posted by Soulskill on from the ruh-roh dept.

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."

26 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. Good thing Slashdot isn't in the EU by weilawei · · Score: 4, Funny

    I quite like the freedom to swear up a fucking storm and make unpleasant comments.

    1. Re:Good thing Slashdot isn't in the EU by weilawei · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Slashdot moderators don't censor; they rate things. I still see every single post. Zero posts are hidden. Which posts have you had outright deleted or modified against your wishes lately?

    2. Re:Good thing Slashdot isn't in the EU by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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
    3. Re:Good thing Slashdot isn't in the EU by samzenpus · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nothing is "outright deleted with some regularity." The flag just puts the comment on a list that an editor looks over every day. We ban spammers who we find leaving links in comments, and occasionally mod down any egregious trolls that aren't already at -1. That's it. We've deleted comments in the past under legal threat but it's not our policy to do so normally. This comment showed up on the list but none of the editors are going to delete it. We think it's important to maintain a place where you can say whatever you want, even if that thing isn't popular or as in this case, correct.

  2. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hopefully this ruling will be used to muzzle the euroskeptics and silence unwarranted criticism of the EU institutions. People don't know how good they have it. They don't need "freedom" they just can't handle, they need unity and purpose and only a united Europe can provide this. Europe is more important than the life of a single human or indeed of whole generations, but small folk do not have the scope to understand this. Silencing dissent is a starting point to instill a European mindset into the populace who has the duty and the privilege to toil for the great destiny of the greatest civilization that has ever been and will ever be.

    1. Re:Good by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Good by hr+raattgift · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

  3. Beneficial For Trolls? by hercludes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Dear EU Courts, by BlueStrat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    - An American Enjoying Their Freedom of Speech

    Well, for as long as even the illusion of 'free speech' lasts, with things like TPP, SOPA, PIPA, and whatever other secret treaties are waiting in the wings for a distraction to provide the right opportunity to sneak a 'yea' vote in.

    Strat

    --
    Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  5. Re:Well this is the end of YouTube... by tompaulco · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and that is what the Republicans want.

    You know what is funny, is every single time somebody puts in the word Republican, the word Democrat works just as well.

    --
    If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
  6. Bullshit by msobkow · · Score: 5, Informative

    I read about this today, and what this Slashdot/Dice crap summary is claiming is absolute BULLSHIT.

    The case in question is regarding defamatory comments posted to a site that the victim went to court over. The courts ordered that the content be taken down. The lazy assed website owners took SIX WEEKS to remove the content.

    There is not ONE jurisdiction in the world where that would be considered acceptable.

    Websites are NOT being held generically responsible for the content posted. In fact, the articles about this topic make it clear that the courts said only large commercial operators such as newspapers can be held responsible and fined for failing to take down content in a timely fashion when ordered to do so.

    But hey, Dice just LOVES their clickbait lately, don't they?

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    1. Re:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      When a court orders you to take down defamatory comments, then yes. It is a good thing to be held accountable to take it down.

      I'm quite far on the individual liberties side of the spectrum, but if a comment is basically slander then I don't see why it shouldn't be able to be removed in a court of law.

      The problem is if companies have inroads into fast tracking removals (such as 3 strikes rules on Youtube or DMCA requests). That's where the real nasty stuff starts happening.

    2. Re:Bullshit by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not sure you have your facts right. According to this report, they removed the comments as soon as they were notified by the victim of those comments. They didn't wait for a court order, but the victim wanted money given to him. The website refused, the court said to pay.

      I don't know where you are, but in the US, the court case Zeran v. America Online provides that websites are not responsible for comments, even if they are notified of defamatory material and neglect to remove it. You can read the relevant law here.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    3. Re:Bullshit by hankwang · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "The case in question is regarding defamatory comments posted to a site that the victim went to court over. The courts ordered that the content be taken down. The lazy assed website owners took SIX WEEKS to remove the content."

      No. RTFJ(udgment), under the chapter "FACTS".

      The comments were removed the day the complaint came in, at which time the comments had been online for 6 weeks. This happened in 2006, by the way. The website had a mechanism for users to flag comments; apparently the complaining party had not used that and demanded monetary compensation at the first contact.

      The judgment is surprisingly legible, though rather long. Much better than the average EULA. I didnn't read past the description of initial events. I'm sure that it also explains why this particular website owner was held responsible.

      --
      Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
    4. Re:Bullshit by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

      The ruling is more subtle than that. It states that the Estonian law which requires the site to pro-actively monitor the comments is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. It doesn't apply to the whole of Europe, just Estonia and countries which have similar laws. I don't know how many that is, but for example in the UK there is no such liability and reactive moderation is fine.

      What is needed now is a new EU directive clarifying this issue and harmonizing the rules for the whole of Europe, which would require Estonia to change its local laws to comply. It's not the huge deal some media outlets are making it out to be, at least not for media outside of Estonia.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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  7. Re:SLAPP? by Fallen+Kell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ummm... when did the US become a European nation?

    --
    We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
  8. Here is why Europe has no Silicon Valley by iamacat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  9. In unrelated news... by Karmashock · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... many European websites have started hosting in East Asia.... apparently the last bastion of free speech...

    Seriously how sad would that be? Fucking France and Sweden. They really need to stop it.

    --
    I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
  10. Once again by Vinegar+Joe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "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
  11. There is a balance between article 8 and 10 by jopsen · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Article 8 protects people against slander, lies etc, article 10 grants free speech, these must be balanced. And when someone clearly violates article 8 in a comment, and a credible professional news organization, refuses to remove the comment, they can be held liable. Opinions from the ruling:

    8. ......Instead, the Court has adopted case-specific reasoning and at the same time has left the relevant principles to be developed more clearly in subsequent case-law.

    15. Having regard to the clearly unlawful nature of the comments in question, as well as the fact that they remained on the news portal for six weeks before they were removed, we do not find it disproportionate for the Supreme Court to find Delfi liable as it had “failed to remove the comments

    There is nothing sensational here. The court didn't say you were liable upfront, it didn't say that you couldn't be (and in some extreme cases that might make sense). But in this case the court ruled that holding someone liable for refusing to take down illegal speech hosted by them is not a free speech violation.
    There is nothing new here. The ruling does not say you must moderate all comments.

    1. Re:There is a balance between article 8 and 10 by hr+raattgift · · Score: 3, Informative

      "What kind of idiots actually write such things?"

      In most of your particular extracts, it was mainly the administrators of the Marshall Plan, namely Americans and British politicians, and principally Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe MP (as he then was) taking inspiration from the work of John Peters Humphrey.

      Codification was considered a good idea to avoid relitigation of common exceptions and strikings-of-balance, and to avoid imposing the need to reference foreign case law on the non-common-law countries that would agree to the document. Conflicts arose as well because some well-organized political party groupings (Christian Democrats in particular) threatened to slow ratification in a number of states simultaneously.

      I think the vast majority of the people of Estonia would disagree with your assessment of the ECHR; it was a live issue in their accession referendum and is far better than the Soviet equivalent in every practical way.

      Likewise, at the time it was written, Nazi laws were still on the books in the various sectors of Germany, and the legal system was a mess in all the different occupied sectors. Getting it working in *all* the sectors of occupied Germany (and Austria), including the Soviet sector was an explicit goal of the convention, and it actually succeeded in that respect for about a decade.

      Finally, the document is a live one, and PACE proposes changes to clarify conflicts, to strengthen individual rights (that's the main theme) and subsidiarity, and so forth. PACE is made up of parliamentarians from each of the COE's member-states, meaning it's mostly EU parliamentarians, and since so few of their constituents engage with them on PACE, a letter written to one in an arbitrary EU member-state is likely to be looked at seriously. Maybe you could put your questions to one of them, or make some suggestions for improvement? "Just scrap it" is something they hear a lot more often from non-politicians than "fix it like this, and I'd be happier".

  12. Re:I for one, by Guildor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  13. Re:Bizarro world by fustakrakich · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The fact you're defending cesspits like 4chat is disgusting.

    To see anybody defend censorship is much more so. It is truly offensive.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  14. Re:Dear EU Courts, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because there are some idiots that might not like what you say and mistake their dislike for it to being entitled to do nasty things to you for voicing your opinion. Having the choice to posting as AC promotes freedom of expression by permitting free speech in situations that might otherwise inhibit or prohibit it.

    Just look at what happens in countries where freedom of speech is not a given. Journalists having to work under cover, gambling their lives just to get the truth out there because those in power would rather silence them. Anonymity matters.

    Having the option to posting as AC doesn't make your opinion invalid - though you're more likely to surround yourself with assholes that way, and make yourself less likely to be heard. But some messages are important enough that even then they're worth voicing.

  15. Re:SLAPP? by hawkinspeter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  16. Re:SLAPP? by mspohr · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Guardian has been doing a lot of research on police killing people in the US compared to the rest of the world.
    Here's a good summary article:
    http://www.theguardian.com/us-...

    A few statistics from the article:
    Fact: Police in the US have shot and killed more people – in every week this year – than are reportedly shot and killed by German police in an entire year.
    Fact: Police in the US fatally shot more people in one month this year than police in Australia officially reported during a span of 19 years.
    Fact: Police in Canada average 25 fatal shooting a year. In California, a state just 10% more populous than Canada, police in 2015 have fatally shot nearly three times as many people in just five months.
    Fact: Police fired 17 bullets at Antonio Zambrano-Montes, who was “armed” with a rock. That’s nearly three times what police in Finland are reported to have fired during all of 2013.
    Fact: In the first 24 days of 2015, police in the US fatally shot more people than police did in England and Wales, combined, over the past 24 years.

    --
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