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“The internet’s not written in pencil, it’s written in ink.”

Advocate General (AG) Szpunar commenced his opinion dated 4 June 2019 in Case C-18/18 (Opinion, available here) with the above quote from the movie The Social Network. In the Opinion the AG analysed the substantive scope of injunctions, in particular if social network providers “may be required to delete, with the help of a metaphorical ink eraser, certain content placed online by users of that platform”, as well as its territorial scope.

I. Background
An Austrian politician applied at the Vienna Commercial Court (Austria) for an injunction requiring a social network provider to cease the publication of a – in her view – defamatory comment about her. A user of the social network shared an article from a news website on their personal page on the network, whereupon the social network generated a ‘thumbnail’ of that post, containing the title, a brief summary of the article and a photograph of the politician. The user also published a disparaging comment about the politician alongside the post (Content in Question). Any user of the social network was able to access the Content in Question.

The Vienna Commercial Court issued the requested injunction and ordered the social network provider to delete and to stop disseminating the Content in Question. Subsequently, the social network provider disabled access to the content in Austria, but not for other countries. After the Vienna Higher Regional Court upheld the injunction, the case was brought to the Austrian Supreme Court. The Austrian Supreme Court referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) the questions of whether the injunction can be extended (i) worldwide, and (ii) to statements with identical wording and/or equivalent content. The Austrian Supreme Court ultimately asked the CJEU to interpret the Directive on electronic commerce (eCommerce Directive) in this context.Continue Reading Advocate General’s opinion on social networks’ obligations on (worldwide) deletion of illegal content

On 1 October 2017, the German Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (Network Enforcement Act, „NetzDG“) that we already reported on in April and May, entered into force (English version here). The NetzDG shall be an “act to improve enforcement of the law in social networks”, and aims at combating fake news and hate speech. Regulatory offences may be fined by up to EUR 5 million for individuals and up to EUR 50 million for the platform provider itself.

The NetzDG has been criticised since the beginning of the legislative process, as a great number of lawyers deem the law incompatible with the principle of freedom of expression and the upcoming EU E-Privacy Directive that will be effective 25 May 2018. Therefore, everyone is waiting in suspense for the first complaints brought up against this law to the German Federal Constitutional Court, or even the European Court of Justice.

We compiled the five key aspects of the NetzDG for social networks to make you NetzDG-ready.
Continue Reading Germany’s new hate speech act in force: what social network providers need to do now