Muammer Dilek, the ex governor of Sanliurfa, claimed that there were defamatory comments about him on the Sanliurfa.Com website. The Court ordered Muhammet Tascilar, the owner of the company hosting the website to pay 5 billion TL (€2500) to the governor of Sanliurfa, for the alleged defamatory comments made on the sanliurfa.com website by an unidentified blogger. (Related domestic laws: Press Code and Turkish Criminal Code).
Coskun Ak was a forum moderator operated by Superonline, a well known ISP in Turkey. He was sentenced to 40 months in prison due to a particular message about human rights abuses in Turkey that was sent to the forum by an anonymous poster. The public prosecutor claimed that Mr. Ak’s position was similar to the editor of a newspaper. The court decided to sentence Ak for insulting and weakening the Republic of Turkey, the Military Forces, the Security Forces, and the Ministry of Justice, to one year in prison for each insult separately, totalling four years. On 14 November, 2001, the 9th Criminal Chamber of the Court Cessation reversed this ruling.
Coskun Ak, a former moderator of various forums operated by Superonline, one of the largest ISPs in Turkey was sentenced to 40 months in prison due to a particular message about human rights abuses in Turkey sent to a Superonline forum by an anonymous poster. The message that triggered a prosecution under article 159 of the Turkish Criminal Code was sent anonymously in May 1999. The court decided to sentence Ak for insulting and weakening the Republic of Turkey, the Military Forces, the Security Forces, and the Ministry of Justice, to one year in prison for each insult separately, totaling four years. Later, his sentence was reduced to 10 months for each insult, totaling 40 months. And on 12 March 2002 Istanbul Criminal Court No. 4 passed a second verdict against Coskun Ak. The sentence of 40 months' imprisonment was...
The claimant brought a claim against Google under art. 10 of the Data Protection Act 1998 in order to oblige the search engine to disable access to pictures infringing on the former’s privacy. Google sought to strike out the claim, on the basis that the order applied for would be incompatible with arts. 13 and 15 of the E-Commerce Directive. The court, after noting that Google is able to block access to individual child pornography images, allowed the claim to go to trial.
A Scottish case, in which the claiming guest house owners were refused a court order which would oblige TripAdvisor - a US-based company – to disclose the personal data of users who wrote allegedly defamatory reviews about the claimant’s establishment. The base of the refusal was that the Scottish Administration of Justice (Scotland) Act 1972 did not cover the identification requests aimed at entities located outside of the country.
The claimant in those proceedings complained about the defamatory comments posted on a blog hosted on Blogger.com, a website operated by Google. It was held that once Google is notified of the defamatory comments on Blogger and fails to remove them within a reasonable time, it might incur liability as the “secondary” publisher of said content. Regarding the defence set out in s. 1 of the Defamation Act 1996 (see above), it was held that Google could not be regarded as the publisher of the comments within the meaning of s. 1(2), and while the company was found to have taken reasonable care with regards to the publication of the statement, it could be denied the defence due to the finding that it knew or should have known that its activity is likely to prolong the publication of the defamatory material. However, the s. 1...