holding a hosting provider not liable for hosting a website where some defamatory comments were posted; the defendant qualified for the hosting safe harbor and thus was exempted from liability.
In the so-called Tribune de Genève case, the Swiss Supreme Court held that a newspaper is civilly liable (Article 28 of the Swiss civil code) when it hosts on its website the blog of a user whose content infringes on the personality rights of a third party. According to the Supreme Court, this liability is justified by the fact that the newspaper contributes to the diffusion of the infringing content to the public and a large circle of readers. The entity hosting the blog can be ordered to eliminate infringing contents on personality rights. Furthermore: (1) The Swiss Supreme Court explicitly clarified that the liability incurred by the infringement of personality rights is not related to the control over the infringing content. Put differently, since this type of liability does not require any fault (wilful intent or...
The Court in Ankara ordered TIB to stay the execution of a blocking order banning access to YouTube in Turkey. Later, upon claim of the Prosecution Office of the same court, YouTube was newly banned.
Following a decision of the 5th Criminal Court of Peace of Istanbul Anadolu, TIB banned two Twitter accounts, discussing the government related corruption news that appeared in the mainstream and social media in Turkey in March 2014. The claimants, a Minister and one of his sons, requested the Court to ban access to the posts published through the Twitter account "Hirsiza oy yok", "@oyyokhirsiza" ("@No vote for thief), which allegedly published content that constituted an explicit violation of the claimants' personal rights. Twitter objected to this decision, since the content published fall under the scope of media freedom of speech.The 18th Criminal Court of Peace accepted Twitter's arguments and cancelled the previous decision, since it was in contrast with the Turkish Constitution. The 18th Criminal Court also...
A 2010 decision of the Turkish criminal court of peace provides an important precedent in regards to how Turkish courts should interpret and apply the provisions of Law No. 5651 to search term suggestions. The court held that Google cannot be held responsible for search-term suggestions appearing on its search engine when the search term “recep konuk corruption” and “recep konuk’s corruptions” appear. The court reasoned that what is being requested for removal is the search term suggestions and not content as understood by Law No. 5651. The court premised its reasoning as follows: “The removal of content which is reached through these search results can be requested from the content provider in accordance with the Law No. 5651 { . . . . The obligations of the access providers are within the context of Article 6 and the...