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Liability of an Estonian newswebsite
For Nederlandsmedianieuws.nl Remco Klöters wrote an article about the liability of newswebsites for readers' comments. Below you find a short introduction and a link to the full article (in Dutch).
bloody shitheads... (...) sick jew! / go and drown yourself / (...) assholes fck / Lynching, to warn the other [islanders] and would-be men.
This is a selection of offensive, but not quite unusual readers’ comments from the Delfi website (www.delfi.ee), a commercial Estonian newsportal comparable to the Dutch Nu.nl.
Delfi publishes up to 330 articles a day which receive approximately 10.000 (!) readers’ comments daily, the majority posted under pseudonyms.
The comments above were placed under an article from 2006 about the Estonian shipping company SLK. SLK and its majority shareholder had angered the Estonians by shifting the routes of their ferry transport which witheld the water from freezing up during winter. Normally during winter these particular waters become ice roads between the Estonian mainland and some islands which are open for the Estonian public. Using these ice roads is cheaper than going across by ferry.
Meanwhile you must be thinking: what does this case have to do with media law? The answer is quite simple. Although Delfi removed the offensive comments after 6 weeks, they had to pay € 320,00 in non-pecuniary damages because the comments violated the personality rights of the owner of SLK.
Read the full article here (in Dutch).