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@ 2015/06/18The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg has ruled that an Estonian news site Delfi may be held responsible for anonymous and defamatory comments from its readers.
The ruling, which goes against the European Union’s e-commerce directive, which “guarantees liability protection for intermediaries that implement notice-and-takedown mechanisms on third-party comments.”
A post from the Media Legal Defence Initiative summarises said the court came to this unexpected decision because of the “the ‘extreme’ nature of the comments which the court considered to amount to hate speech.
The fact that they were published on a professionally-run and commercial news website,” as well as the “insufficient measures taken by Delfi to weed out the comments in question and the low likelihood of a prosecution of the users who posted the comments.”
The ruling, which goes against the European Union’s e-commerce directive, which “guarantees liability protection for intermediaries that implement notice-and-takedown mechanisms on third-party comments.”
A post from the Media Legal Defence Initiative summarises said the court came to this unexpected decision because of the “the ‘extreme’ nature of the comments which the court considered to amount to hate speech.
The fact that they were published on a professionally-run and commercial news website,” as well as the “insufficient measures taken by Delfi to weed out the comments in question and the low likelihood of a prosecution of the users who posted the comments.”
