Italian Court Rules Web Editors Not Responsible For Comments 72
itwbennett writes "Internet freedom got a boost Wednesday when Italy's highest court ruled that the editors of online publications can't be held legally responsible for defamatory comments posted by their readers. The judges said online publications could not be treated in the same way as traditional print media and could not be expected to exercise preventative editorial control over readers' comments."
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This doesn't mean no one is legally responsible for anonymous comments though.
Then, who's responsible ?
Re:Sadly (Score:5, Insightful)
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Is Slashdot actually required by law to save ip addresses with each comment?
Which law would that be?
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Re:Sadly (Score:5, Informative)
The poster? Just that it doesn't show your details on the page doesn't mean it makes you invulnerable to prosecution if you break the law. Even Slashdot saves the ip addresses of commenters and if you post something that breaks the law and police comes asking about it, they have to hand out the details. That is not going to ever change either.
I do not know about today, but back when /. did not save the IP addresses of people posting with UID 666. That actually came to court once, I think, when some Anonymous Coward posted text from the Scientology holy book (copyrighted material).
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Which was only a problem because the legal system let Scientology treat their religious texts as trade secrets or something. Something related to intellectual property for sure.
You'd think if the religion was any good they'd want their text spread as far and wide as possible.
I don't get it.
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True enough, but I do question its effectiveness as an evangelizing tool.
Which just begs the question on if scientology is actually a bona fide religion to begin with.
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it's pretty established at this point that Scientology isn't a bona fide religion. A number of countries have already banned it.
Actually, I would say that being banned quite makes Scientology that much more legitimate. Think of the Bahai, Jews, or Falun Gong.
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Religion: The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.
By that definition, the Church of Google, http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/ [thechurchofgoogle.org], is a religion. Jediism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
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I don't get it.
I do. They shoot for the "elite rich" angle.
Let's say you offer a service (in the case of Scientology, it would be metaphysical bullshit (like most religions IMO)). Posit that said service is something like a club where you can engage in a few activities as well as attached extras like a restaurant and bar. There's nothing really special about most of this stuff, but if you package it all together, make it look nice, hire a bunch of security, and act pretentious as hell you can call it a "Country Club" and
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The poster? Just that it doesn't show your details on the page doesn't mean it makes you invulnerable to prosecution if you break the law.
Yet, to post on most website, including Slashdot, you need to relinquish any rights you have on what you said. It seems to be that if you are responsible for the negative consequences of what you post, you should retain some modicum control on it.
For example imagine you are drunk and post something offensive on slashdot - you cannot go back and delete it before it offends more people. If slashdot then randomly select your comment and use it as a quote, you also need to assume responsibility for that. And
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You may be correct that it's not clear to the masses, but it should be. If you do or say something, you are responsible for it. Period. Outside of mental illnesses, there are no excuses.
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and talibans undid wtc.
And Islam is the religion of peace..... no wait that's just too rediculous
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I think that some people didn't get my stupid joke.
The Anonymous Coward wrote "Jews did wtc" i.e "jews made/created the World Trade Center", which is partly true.
My comment was made to turn that comment into just that instead of the intended "jews did the wtc attack".
"talibans undid wtc" = talibans uncreated the world trade center.
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Mac is better than PC, Hitler was right about everything, Nintendo is better than Sega, people who use Linux are homosexual, oh and Obama is a Muslim terrorist.
-CmdrTaco
Thanks for that. You've just given the answer to 90% of all the troll threads on Slashdot. Now that's cleared up we can look forward to a troll-free future.
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duh duh duh duh (Score:1)
wow a judge that actually has a brain
it took a lawsuit to figure out there are differences between the internet and a newspaper
On the other hand ... (Score:5, Interesting)
If everything has to go all the way to the court system, how can the society function?
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If everything has to go all the way to the court system, how can the society function?
Quite well, actually. It doesn't mean that every instance of something has to go to court, you have big decisions like Sony vs Betamax and then most variations are considered settled case law. There'll always be borderline cases but the contested areas get smaller and smaller. Both in common law and civil law systems you look to higher courts, past cases and similar cases in other jurisdictions and try to be consistent, even if you have different concepts of precedent. Editorial responsibility for comments
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Ordinary people with ordinary jobs do not have the time to go to court.
The system works if you run your forum on a commercial basis and free speech is releveant to the forums function.
In all other cases having to go to court is a pretty big disruption to your normal life.
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Ordinary people with ordinary jobs do not have the time to go to court. The system works if you run your forum on a commercial basis and free speech is releveant to the forums function. In all other cases having to go to court is a pretty big disruption to your normal life.
Agreed. I spend too much time reading slashdot to be bothered with going to court.
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Which countries do? (Score:1)
I don't know if I really should be getting out of the basement but in my knowledge I don't know any country that holds the editor responsible for any comment made by others on an online publication. Though I am really currious if there is any.
If there isn't any, is this really news?
Re:Which countries do? (Score:5, Informative)
Germany.
Google for "Störerhaftung", for example.
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UK, but only if they do not comply after removal is requested (cf Godfrey vs Demon Internet Ltd [bailii.org]). AFAICT, this ruling appears to suggest that 3rd party comments can remain even if removal is requested in Italy, and so is contrary to the UK rule.
(IANAL, and have not read the ruling in question, so this is just my personal interpretation which is quite likely to be wrong...)
Also, if there were any European country that was *going* to hold the editor responsible, it would be Italy. Italy's defamation laws are
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This is a country that as recently as 2002 imprisoned a newspaper editor for running articles suggesting some judges were mismanaging cases and handing out inappropriate sentences.
Did he get an appropriate sentence?
Re:Which countries do? (Score:4, Funny)
You mean an appropriate sentence for publishing inappropriate sentences? :p
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Or I should say, an appropriate sentence for publishing "inappropriate" sentences about inappropriate sentences.
Seen a photo of the judges? (Score:5, Funny)
Can anyone verify that the court is not made up of CmdrTaco, CowboyNeal and other ex-/. editors wearing robes and fake Italian accents?
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Sharpen your keyboards, ACs! (Score:5, Insightful)
Got my Nomex suit on, so let's go!
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Eat them?
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What if the nature of the allegation was such that they were still at risk, or that it was personally embarrassing to them? e.g. victims of rape and domestic violence
Certainly, reasonableness is important and I doubt a reasonable person would consider an anonymous posting on a forum to be convincing, but to allow all anonymous allegations would be a system ripe for abuse.
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Now we just need a definition of "reasonable" that isn't completely subjective.
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We already have one. The term 'reasonable person' is a term of art used in law to indicate that an objective test should be applied. It's ambiguous because it's usually used to deal with unanticipated situations. In practice, this means that you usually need a court to decide what is reasonable, if the parties can't agree on it.
The subjective equivalent is 'a reasonable person in the position of X', which considers the knowledge and idiosyncrasies of X but still requires them to have acted reasonably. That
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We already have one.
Whether it is society's (a majority's) opinion on what is reasonable, or a judge's, "reasonable" is still subjective. No matter what test they use, the definition will probably remain subjective.
It may be useful at times, but I think "it's ripe for abuse" depending on the situation.
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Whether it is society's (a majority's) opinion on what is reasonable, or a judge's, "reasonable" is still subjective. No matter what test they use, the definition will probably remain subjective.
It may be useful at times, but I think "it's ripe for abuse" depending on the situation.
Under that approach, it's impossible to have truly subjective test. I meant subjective only in comparison to the objective test.
Besides, if you can't trust the judges in a common law system to apply the test in a just and equitable manner, then you have bigger problems than defamation law.
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objective test
What "objective test"?
Besides, if you can't trust the judges in a common law system to apply the test in a just and equitable manner, then you have bigger problems than defamation law.
What is "just"? That's subjective, too. The fact that you disagree with a judge's decision doesn't mean that his decision wasn't "just."
The system will likely always be ripe for abuse.
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Everything was fine and peachy until the name Anonymous was co-opted and that entity/unit started doing bad things. He becomes a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night. "Rat on your pop, and Anonymous will get you."
Odd world-view (Score:3, Interesting)
My mother-in-law once asked me how to remove a comment critical of their (brick-and-mortar) bridal fashion store from an online shop-review forum. At first I didn't understand her question, simply because the idea was too foreign for my brain to parse, and then we had a lively discussion about freedom of speech.
It's good to see this court ruled the way it did, but it remains baffling to me how confused some people are about the mechanics of online forums. And I don't mean the technical mechanics, but the idea that comments/forum posts are content that are not controlled by the site's owner. This seems to be incomprehensible to some people.
Re:Odd world-view (Score:5, Interesting)
I operate a website which has a local, loyal, knowledgeable, and (many time) contentious userbase. These people routinely post comments which get to the heart of the matter and because of the content of the site (restaurant reviews and local politics (county/city level)) can cause business owners and politicians to become upset.
One particular business, which isn't local yet but plans to be in the next year+, had some representatives post comments on the site and engage my readership. While I always track down new commenters to the best of my ability, especially to out astrotufing, these reps took the time to clearly announce who they were before I had to do any real work (thanks!)
However, after they posted some comments they realized two things:
1. They didn't sound very good.
2. They didn't like what my readers had to say.
As a result of this several exchanges went back and forth with them trying to get me to allow their comments and the comments of others to be edited/deleted.
Obviously the repeated answer I gave was "No."
---
People are learning about the Internet, especially PR, but for the most part they're very naive. I continually catch business owners or their reps trying to post astroturf comments in favor of the business and I happily out them. This happens on a continual basis and really brings into question sites such as Urbanspoon (which I actively support on my site) and Yelp.
If you're interested you can see one of my discussions about this here: http://www.lazylightning.org/astroturfing-poor-attempts-at-changing-opinion [lazylightning.org]
However, if I am told by a court order to remove the comments, I will. I will go to bat for as long as I can before I have to put my financial stake on the line for a bunch of people on the Internet. I do my best to keep them anonymous (no long-term logging, allow them to use any non-bouncing e-mail address that they actually check) but I will only go so far.
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I got a series of robocalls from someone claiming to be Rachel with "Card Services" [honeypot.net] wanting to help lower my credit card interest rate. I blogged about it, and 280,000 hits and 972 comments to that page later, I guess I wasn't the only one they were pestering. I removed exactly two comments from that post ever:
The first was when a poster alleged that a certain person was responsible for all the calls. I got a letter from that person's lawyer telling me to take down the site because it contained libelous sta
A small, meaningless victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Italy still has strict limitations on free speech, this victory is but a drop in the ocean.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Here is a nice example. [bbc.co.uk]
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The problem is, convicting executives of service providers (mind you, they didn't sue the company) can make these kind of services disappear, thus preventing everyone from using them, and that would have a massive effect on free speech.
People define free speech differently, depending on their cultural and geopolitical background, and sometimes their agenda.
I would rather say that people redefine free speech differently so they don't have to face the fact that there isn't unlimited free speech in almost anywhere. Yes, it could be much worse, I agree with that, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be better. True, it varies between
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That's why they should do away with laws against libel, slander, death threats, harassment,
Yes, they should.
copyright infringement, trade secrets
Free speech is not an unalienable right. By signing an NDA, or accepting the licensing terms of a copyrighted material, you accept those limits on your speech..
false advertising
Now this is a hard one, I admit, but I still think it would be possible to rewrite false advertising laws to be compatible with free speech. Instead of blacklisting false advertisers, authorities could allow advertisements found to be honest to display a 'badge' or logo on them, something like "certified honest advertisement".
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After his... (Score:4, Funny)
...career as a judge in Italy, Captain Obvious will be running for political office. And there was singing and dancing in the streets of Italy!