You're pretty harsh with your judgement. The decision stipulates that a fine of 320 EUR for a large commercial provider in a case where it took weeks to take down extreme occurrences of hate speech does not violate fundamental human rights.
The relevant quote from the judgement:
Based on the concrete assessment of the above aspects, taking into account the reasoning of
the Supreme Court in the present case, in particular the extreme nature of the comments in
question, the fact that the comments were posted in reaction to an article published by the
applicant company on its professionally managed news portal run on a commercial basis, the
insufficiency of the measures taken by the applicant company to remove without delay after
publication comments amounting to hate speech and speech inciting violence and to ensure a
realistic prospect of the authors of such comments being held liable, and the moderate sanction
imposed on the applicant company, the Court finds that the domestic courts’ imposition of
liability on the applicant company was based on relevant and sufficient grounds, having
regard to the margin of appreciation afforded to the respondent State.
> The decision stipulates that a fine of 320 EUR for a large commercial provider in a case where it took weeks to take down extreme occurrences of hate speech does not violate fundamental human rights.
Lol. Says the guy that complains about a misleading title and writes posts that are just as bad, if not worse. Kettle, meet Pot.
> Some weeks later L requested that some 20 comments be deleted and damages be paid. Delfi removed the offending comments the same day, but refused to pay damages.
Yeah, yeah it does violate fundamental human rights when a "notice-and-takedown" system is not sufficient legal protection for a neutral intermediary.
Frankly, if you cannot figure out how easy this would be to abuse against Estonian websites...I'm sorry you have such limited imagination. Its a deficiency you should look into because "legal attacks" are just as valid as any other security problem and the ability to generate large quantities of hate speech is technically simple and easy to use as comment spam.
The moment someone starts doing that is the moment pretty much every Estonian site has to stop accepting all UGC.
Except that the actual legal judgement went to great lengths to avoid setting that kind of wider precedent by pointing out their judgement applied because the publisher was a large commercial publishing venture that, in the view of the court, could reasonably have been expected to be more proactive in moderating the comments on that particular article based on its subject matter and an apparent "general reputation of comments on the Delfi news portal" as well as the fact it was selling advertising on dedicated comment pages. It also made a point of ruling the fine was proportionate because they couldn't perceive it as having any impact upon its business model, which already includes a moderator team removing >20,000 inappropriate user generated posts per month....
I don't think the decision of the Estonian courts was a good one for a number of reasons, but I can also see why a supranational human rights court could have great trouble seeing why they should overturn it to defend a corporation from a small damages claim for UGC it had profited from and did not attempt to defend as legitimate speech.
> I don't think the decision of the Estonian courts was a good one for a number of reasons, but I can also see why a supranational human rights court could have great trouble seeing why they should overturn it to defend a corporation from a small damages claim for UGC it had profited from and did not attempt to defend as legitimate speech.
Fair enough, I was mainly responding to his weeks comment and the fact that as soon as they were notified it was removed w/i 24 hours of notification and the fact he said "notice-and-takedown" wasn't enough effectively.
There is an unfortunate tendency to dismiss everything that doesn't 100% conform to the constitutional framework of where one is living.
That's especially pronounced in the US, because the US constitution is very rarely amended and almost religiously venerated. The Founding Fathers are often seen as demi-gods who could never have gone wrong.
I wish people would separate "that's the best to handle it" from "that's the only way to handle it, and everyone who disagrees is a human rights abusing asshole".
If anyone is interested I could tell a nice story where our Federal Constitution Court got it right and ruled in the former style ("we could never accept it under our constitution, but it's not as if it were a total injustice").
> There is an unfortunate tendency to dismiss everything that doesn't 100% conform to the constitutional framework of where one is living.
Ah yes, you are adorable at generalizing. You'll notice I pretty much only defend the 1st & 4th amendments [free speech and privacy], indifferent to the 2nd, and I could go on but yeah.
A right to speak freely, worship freely, to be safe from violence, and be secure in your privacy are critical to a functional democracy and fundamental human rights.
> I wish people would separate "that's the best to handle it" from "that's the only way to handle it, and everyone who disagrees is a human rights abusing asshole".
Yes, everyone who doesn't protect those rights is an asshole. I'm not saying start a revolution over it. I'm just saying they are shitty people and its a shitty law.
The relevant quote from the judgement: