Huge Loss For Free Speech In Europe: Human Rights Court Says Sites Liable For User Comments
Last year we wrote about a very dangerous case going to the European Court of Human Rights: Delfi AS v. Estonia, which threatened free expression across Europe. Today, the ruling came out and it's a disaster. In short, websites can be declared liable for things people post in comments. As we explained last year, the details of the case were absolutely crazy. The court had found that even if a website took down comments after people complained, it could still be held liable because it should have anticipated bad comments in the first place. Seriously. In this case, the website had published what everyone agrees was a "balanced" article about "a matter of public interest" but that the website publisher should have known that people would post nasty comments, and therefore, even though it automated a system to remove comments that people complained about, it was still liable for the complaints.
The European Court of Human Rights agreed to hear the case, and we hoped for a better outcome this time around -- but those hopes have been dashed. The ruling is terrible through and through. First off, it insists that the comments on the news story were clearly "hate speech" and that, as such, "did not require any linguistic or legal analysis since the remarks were on their face manifestly unlawful." To the court, this means that it's obvious such comments should have been censored straight out. That's troubling for a whole host of reasons at the outset, and highlights the problematic views of expressive freedom in Europe. Even worse, however, the Court then notes that freedom of expression is "interfered with" by this ruling, but it doesn't seem to care -- saying that it is deemed "necessary in a democratic society."
Think about that for a second.