The European Court of Human Right’s (ECHR) recent judgement concerning Delfi, Estonia’s largest news portal may have some unwarranted effects on IP.
In January of 2006, Estonia published an informative article concerning Leedo. Leedo is a company incorporated in Estonia that provides ferry rides to and from one of the many islands in Estonia. Leedo announced that it will be changing the routes that their ferry’s will be taking, which Delfi reported on their website. The response to Leedo’s change was not well received by the public. While the contents of the article written by Delfi was not an issue, the comments written by anonymous users on their website was. Thus, Leedo filed a suit against Delfi from which they won a total of 320 euros in the lower courts.
However, the matter was not settled there. The decision by the Estonian lower courts ruled that Article 10 of the convention (freedom of expression) may be overruled in appropriate circumstances when it comes to protecting the reputation of individuals or companies. The courts also rejected Delfi’s argument that it was “impossible” to monitor all the comments made on the website by anonymous users. The appeal went all the way to the ECHR, where the decision was held to be within the margin of appreciation.
This decision may have a significant impact in the realm of intellectual property. It has been established in some jurisdictions that websites are not responsible for the contents uploaded by anonymous user. This principle was seen in play in the US case of Viacom international inc v Youtube inc. While, I appreciate the issue in Delfi has very little to do with intellectual property, the decision by the ECHR has established that the courts are willing to find websites responsible for some content uploaded by the users.
No doubt, this decision may be the fuel for a more persuasive argument next time there is a dispute between a record label and a video/audio uploading website.
Source:
http://rt.com/news/eu-delfi-offensive-comments-075/
