FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

FC: Swedish paper found liable for pro-Nazi rants on discussion board

------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 13:21:23 -0500 From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@politechbot.com Subject: FC: Swedish paper found liable for pro-Nazi rants on discussion board Send reply to: declan@well.com

Also see: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/24352.html

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http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/3/7/15844/31987

Swedish court holds forum owner responsible (Freedom & Politics) Thu Mar 7th, 2002 at 04:19:42 PM EST

In a ruling today, a Swedish court holds the editor of thke web edition of Aftonbladet (a major Swedish newspaper) responsible for comments published on their forum, and the forum has subsequently closed. Aftonbladet was one of the first Swedish newspapers with a web edition. They are still the most visited website in Sweden, and they have up until today encouraged their visitors to voice their opinion on different news items in an online forum called 'Tyck till' ("Your opinion"). In October 2000, four posts on the forum expressed Nazi sympathies, and owing to some technical problems, they were not deleted from the forum (which is moderated) for some time. This caused charges to be brought on Aftonbladet for agitation against an ethnic group, and the matter was resolved today when the editor of the web edition was found guilty of the charges, on the grounds that the posts were published in the first place. The Swedish constitution states that freedom of speech does not include the right to agitate against an ethnic group, and this was what the court felt was more important than the fact that the editor tried to remove the offending posts. This ruling sets a precedent whereby the publisher of a website can be held responsible for what is published in an open forum, and it might even spell the end for unmoderated online discussion on Swedish websites.

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