News Sites ‘Not Liable For Offensive Reader Comment’- Court

News websites are not responsible for “insulting and rude”
comments by readers, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday, after
a Hungarian website was sued for messages on its forum. The case related to the
Index.hu news website on which readers posted a series of angry comments about
a real-estate company.  One had written:
“People like this should go and shit a hedgehog and spend all their money on
their mothers’ tombs until they drop dead.”

In response, the real-estate company, which was not named in
the ECHR judgement, successfully sued the news portal as well as an association
for Hungarian Internet firms in the local courts for allowing the comments to
be published.  Index.hu said it had
immediately removed the offending comments after they had been flagged, but
that it could not be held liable for everything readers posted.

Its lawyers argued that making the news site liable for
comments “would have serious adverse repercussions for the freedom of
expression and the democratic openness in the age of Internet.” The ECHR
agreed, with its judges saying the Hungarian courts had failed to balance the
need to prevent abuse with the right to free expression.

“Although offensive and vulgar, the incriminated comments
did not constitute clearly unlawful speech; and they certainly did not amount
to hate speech or incitement to violence,” the judges wrote.

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