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Posts Tagged ‘spanish libel lawyers’

Web Owners Are Not Always Responsible For User’s Posts

July 17th, 2009

Web owners and in general owners of forums, blogs and wikis are not to be held responsible of the user’s posts and comments, following the Law of Services to the Information Society, LSSI for short. Lugo’s High Court has just passed a recent ruling on this matter which acquits the web owners of “mindoniense.com”.

“Mindoniense.com” is a website dedicated to providing general information on the mainland town of Mondoñedo. Two anonymous forum users attacked relentlessly the town’s major. The major filed a libel law suit defending his honour. It was turned down as there weren’t enough grounds to sentence anyone in particular. The major alternatively sued the website’s owners as they were unable to identify both forum users.

In the first ruling the judge ruled that website owners cannot be held accountable on comments posted by users in accordance to art 16 of the LSSI. However the nuance is that web owners must not be aware of the illegality of the posted comments or that they undermine someone’s legitimate rights subject to compensation, and must act hastily to remove libellous remarks or else make them inaccessible on them being reported.

Source: El Mundo Newspaper (http://www NULL.elmundo NULL.es/elmundo/2009/07/15/navegante/1247664007 NULL.html)

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