Goodbye To Unmoderated Discussions In France

from the silly-legal-decisions dept

It seems the US isn't the only country full of judges who don't seem to understand the internet. According to the latest Politech mailing, a ruling in France has said that the owner of an unmoderated discussion website is responsible for any comments on that discussion group. In this case, the owner of a website is being sued for libel for comments someone else made on the site. As the person who sent it in says, this could lead to the end of unmoderated discussions in Europe. Of course, knowing the French courts recent history with internet decisions, they'll probably now say that Yahoo! is liable for their stock boards, and accuse Tim Koogle (and Terry Semel) of war crimes again. The article linked to from Politech is in French. If I come across an English version, I'll post it here.
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