The author does not look at the issue in full. Reputation damage is one of the most unpredictable risks and usually also affects many related parties of the target subject, thus it is a very complex area commercially and socially.
To summarise the content of the article, a website is facilitating an anonymous attack of a third party by an unspecified user, and the author of the article wants to see this practice protected, particularly in the jurisdiction of the alleged victim and giving the victim appropriate rights to defend itself.
How is the threatened subject going to defend itself against a cowardly attacker who is hosted or protected by somebody else? The USA under G.W. Bush and Barack Obama knew the answer and it wasn't by advice from Germany.
Clearly, service or product providers have to be held accountable for the information they are facilitating or helping of spreading, or alternatively they can go after or disclose the source of the threatening information.
In this sense, the author could have simply said 'I am only the service provider of information, and the unaffiliated voice behind those allegedly illegal comments is the *identified user* named ...' This is exactly how the Swiss banks are resolving the pressure by the US government in the banks' facilitation of tax evasion under US law. And neither the US nor the Swiss are acting by advice from Germany.
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Food for thought
To summarise the content of the article, a website is facilitating an anonymous attack of a third party by an unspecified user, and the author of the article wants to see this practice protected, particularly in the jurisdiction of the alleged victim and giving the victim appropriate rights to defend itself.
How is the threatened subject going to defend itself against a cowardly attacker who is hosted or protected by somebody else? The USA under G.W. Bush and Barack Obama knew the answer and it wasn't by advice from Germany.
Clearly, service or product providers have to be held accountable for the information they are facilitating or helping of spreading, or alternatively they can go after or disclose the source of the threatening information.
In this sense, the author could have simply said 'I am only the service provider of information, and the unaffiliated voice behind those allegedly illegal comments is the *identified user* named ...' This is exactly how the Swiss banks are resolving the pressure by the US government in the banks' facilitation of tax evasion under US law. And neither the US nor the Swiss are acting by advice from Germany.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Sven Haile.
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