[OT] Strange verdict in Swedish court

[Frostmarrow]

The largest paper on the web in Sweden, Aftonbladet, has been found guilty of "ethnic group bashing" (have no idea what it's called in English) on the web.

The paper has ongoing debates on their servers. People discuss everything on those boards. Usually the subject is the good old war of the sexes. Sometimes, though, people post stupid stuff on those boards. At one time a poster posted nazi-propaganda which the editor failed to spot and it got published on the web. The post was reported and swiftly removed by the editor. The Stockholm court ("tingsrätten", the first instance) found the publisher guilty of the crime mentioned above.

The verdict was that the publisher (which referrs to a person, not the paper) is responsible for whatever gets published on the web, as if she had written it herself.

Sort of like Morrus being responsible for what I post here.

Aftonbladet shut their servers down immidiately, others are expected to follow suit. The web debate in Sweden is dead.

Aftonbladet

 

[EOL]

That might not mean the end of web debate, but it certainly means the end of interesting, uncensored, unmoderated web debate. OUCH!!

I for one completely disagree with that ruling and hope this sort of ruling/precedent doesn't spread to other countries.

 

[Berandor]

I like that.

I don't know for how long the post in question stood on the boards, and how you go about posting there.

But given that a tolerable amount of time has passed, I really like the verdict.

I remember when someone posted a link here to a site with a rassitic role.playing game, where you had to kill the [CENSORED] to insure the dominance of the white warriors.

When mailing the hosting company to tell them about it, they declined responsibility.

Perhaps that will change now.

Berandor

 

[Berandor]

Addendum: The end of uncensored, free web debate?

Look at these boards! Try posting such here, and see how long it takes one of the mods to delete it!

Still, I don't feel controlled or anything here.

Berandor

 

[Wolfspider]

Look at these boards! Try posting such [stuff] here, and see how long it takes one of the mods to delete it!

Well, I get the impression that the publisher of this website deleted the offending posts as well, but he was held accountable nonetheless. Moderators here would have to look at every post before it was actually added to a thread and delete inappropriate ones in order to comply with such a ruling.

Speaking of moderators, I expect a mod to come along any time now and close this potential firestorm of a topic. This is getting really close to politics....

 

[kyuss]

Well, thats what ya get for living in a socialist state. This would never happen in the USA, but i'm afraid something ridiculous like this could very well happen in my beloved Canada.

 

[Zerovoid]

I think a better policy is that each individual is responsible for all the information that they create and post. Holding someone responsible for what is done by computers that they own, when those actions are initiated by another person, is a stupid policy. Most of the web is automated, there is no way it can even exist if someone must read every word of every document before posting it on their servers.

I guess the Swedes don't have total freedom of speech like we do in the US, and I can see some merit in restricting things like hate speech, but to enforce something like this is totally unworkable. The problem is, nobody makes a conscious decision to publish the hate speech on the web, it is "published" without any human intervention, so how can they blame this guy for publishing it?

 

[Frostmarrow]

Well, thats what ya get for living in a socialist state. This would never happen in the USA, but i'm afraid something ridiculous like this could very well happen in my beloved Canada.

Socialist state? Sweden is a free democratic country*, thank you very much. You should invest some ranks in Knowledge (Geography)

The problem is that Aftonbladet, being a major newspaper (say two million readers), receives far more post to it's messageboards than this board for example. That means that it's impossible to scrutinize every single post received. Since Aftonbladet realises this they closed the servers down.

Bear in mind that the verdict can be appealed twice in Sweden and then some in the EU. I'm sure they will change it. Still, I thought it might interest a bunch of webdebators such as your-selves.

*) CIA calls Sweden a constitutional monarchy

 

[Thengil]

We DO have freedom of speech in Sweden, with one exception: It is not legal to publicly express racist views. What happened in this particular case was that due to technical difficulties the moderators could not remove the offending posts which were up on the site for some time.

It all boils down to who is legally responsible for the racist posts. As the editor of a magazine is responsible for views expressed in his magazine, the moderators of a bbs are responsible for posts on their message board. What I don't agree with in this particular case is that the moderators got busted for something that clearly wasn't their fault. It's the letter of the law rather than the spirit, so to speak.

We may live in a socialist state, but we can still say (almost) what we want

 

[angramainyu]

Please don't turn this into a political debate. It would be painfully ironic to have to close this thread... I think I will move it to Meta forum, though.