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” …
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.