On Friday 28 October 2016 Robert Spano, judge at the European Court of Human Rights, gave a presentation at IViR.
He spoke about intermediary liability for online user comments – the Delfi jurisprudence.
The Delfi case raised a lot of discussion and is one of the first on the role of intermediaries in today’s information society. Robert Spano has been a judge at the European Court of Human Rights since November 2013. In 2015 the Council of Europe produced a video series about freedom of expression in which he featured talking about the protection of sources.
In his presentation, Judge Spano discussed the facts of the Delfi case and a similar case, MTE & Index v. Hungary, that was decided by the ECHR in 2016. After his presentation, he answered questions from the attending researchers and information law students, which led to an insightful and lively discussion about the different aspects of the two cases.
Selected publications on the Delfi case:
- (in Dutch): Annotatie bij Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens 16 juni 2015 (Delfi AS / Estland), B. van der Sloot, European Human Rights Cases, 2015-9, nr. 172.
- (in Dutch): De aansprakelijkheid van online nieuwsplatforms na Delfi: Online nieuwsplatform dat nalaat manifest schadelijke gebruikersinhoud proactief weg te filteren riskeert aansprakelijkheid, D. Voorhoof, Mediaforum, 2015-6, p. 194-204.
- The practical and theoretical problems with ‘balancing’: Delfi, Coty and the redundancy of the human rights framework, B. van der Sloot, Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, 2016-3, p. 439-459.
- Delfi AS v. Estonia: Grand Chamber confirms liability of online news portal for offensive comments posted by its readers, D. Voorhoof, Strasbourg Observers, 18 June 2015.
- Delfi v Estonia: ISPs and the freedom to impart information, C. Angelopoulos, The IPKat, 24 June 2015.
Selected publications on the MTE & Index.hu vs. Hungary case:
- Case-note on ECHR 2 February 2016 (MTE & Index.hu vs. Hungary), T. McGonagle, European Human Rights Cases, 2016-7, nr. 140.
- MTE v Hungary: New ECtHR Judgment on Intermediary Liability and Freedom of Expression, C. Angelopoulos, Kluwer Copyright Blog, 5 March 2016.