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ECHR: Commercially-run Internet news portal liable for online comments

Xinhua, June 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

In Tuesday's Grand Chamber in the case of Delfi AS v. Estonia, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) held that there had been no violation of article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

This was the first case in which the Court had been called upon to examine a complaint about liability for user-generated comments on an Internet news portal.

The Grand Chamber ruled that the Estonian courts' finding of liability against Delfi had been a justified and proportionate restriction on the Internet news portal's freedom of expression. The supreme European Court of Human Rights confirmed the previous national and european judgments.

In January 2006, Delfi published an article on its webpage about a ferry company. It concerned the company's decision to change the route its ferries to go to some islands. This had caused ice to break where ice roads could have been made in the near future. As a result, the opening of cheaper and faster roads was postponed for several weeks. Below the article, many readers had written highly offensive or threatening posts about the ferry operator and its owner.

The European Court of Human Rights argues that the comments in question had been extreme, engaged clearly unlawful hate speech, and had been posted in reaction to an article published by Delfi on its professionally managed news portal run on a commercial basis. Delfi had an economic interest in the posting of the comments, said the Court.

Moreover, the steps taken by Delfi to prevent or remove comments without delay the defamatory comments once published had been insufficient. As a consequence, the comments had remained for six weeks and only removed after the legal request of the lawyers of the complainant.

Last, the Grand Chamber considered that the consequences for Delfi having been held liable were small. The 320 euros fine was by no means excessive for Delfi, one of the largest estonian Internet portals. The portal popularity had not been affected in any way - the number of comments posted had in fact increased.

The Grand Chamber underlined Tuesday the conflicting realities between the benefits of Internet, an unprecedented platform for freedom of expression (as protected by the Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights) and its dangers, mostly the risks of hate speech and speech inciting violence being disseminated worldwide remaining online indefinitely, in violation of personality rights (as protected under Article 8 of the European Convention). Endit