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."

Comments

Good thing Slashdot isn't in the EU

[weilawei]

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

Re:Good thing Slashdot isn't in the EU

[weilawei]

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?

Re:Good thing Slashdot isn't in the EU

[samzenpus]

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.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good

[IamTheRealMike]

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.

Beneficial For Trolls?

[hercludes]

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.

Re:Dear EU Courts,

[BlueStrat]

- 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

Re:Well this is the end of YouTube...

[tompaulco]

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.

Bullshit

[msobkow]

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?

Re:Bullshit

[phantomfive]

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.

Re:Bullshit

[hankwang]

"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.

Here is why Europe has no Silicon Valley

[iamacat]

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.

Once again

[Vinegar Joe]

"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'

Re:Dear EU Courts,

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:SLAPP?

[mspohr]

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.