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MediaCon: but then the Internet took its ball and went home

May 22, 2003 8:15 AM - comments (1)

Mikael Pawlo, among the world's, and certainly Sweden's, most active lawyers monitoring of all things cyber, wrote a terrifying story about the law regulating the net last year. Seems a newspaper ran an online forum where readers could post. A reader posted speech that was deemed "hate speech." The newspaper was held liable -- not because it failed to remove the speech quickly enough. The newspaper was liable the moment the speech was posted. Thus, the message from the Swedish courts: Do not create fora where people get to speak unless an editor reads their speech first. The story is here.

And they say the Internet will check "big media" ...

Posted on May 22, 2003 8:15 AM | | technorati

Comments (1)

May 23, 2003 8:50 PM button:

The Register writer makes worthy points. Within an American context, I don't endorse the "hate speech" concept. I respect and recognize the "special" situation of Germany. I almost didn't click through for this article, and now that I have, I wish I didn't know this about Sweden. TMI! Ah, Sweden. It's supposed to be almost Utopia. That leaves us with a much more profound question begging to be answered than the legal one: viz; why is there so much "hate speech" in Utopia? A court is not supposed to be a psychotherapist's office.

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