Abstrakt
Th is paper refl ects on possible consequences of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Delfi AS v. Estonia.
Th is case concerns the liability of the Internet news portal for defamatory comments of anonymous readers. Th e European Court concluded that entities which provide forums for third parties to post comments are liable for harm caused by these posts, even in the event of a disclaimer stating that the responsibility for comments is borne by the actual authors, and even when the off ensive comments were removed immediately upon the request of a victim.
According to the applicant, there are only two ways to comply with such a judgment: 1) to introduce general monitoring of all online conversations, or 2) to ban reader anonymity. Given that it is almost impossible to read all the posts on the web, it is highly probable that Internet service providers will vote for the second option.
Th e question is how it will infl uence the appearance of Internet media in the future.