I am preparing an article for my students on internet law, I would like to know under which jurisdiction does website content fall under. To take an example: Let’s say an Italian blogger writes something defamatory against a prominent political figure in Italy, but the site is hosted in the UK, would the Italian courts still be able to order the removal of the offending content, or would the content fall under the UK jurisdiction as it is hosted there?
You probably want to ask a lawyer, over random internet folk, if you’re going to give legal advice to your students. Especially when it comes to Italy and the internet.
My guess would be that the Italian court can convict the Italian blogger of breaking an Italian law. And this Italian court can even order the removal of the content from the UK web host, but it has no power over the hosting company to enforce that order.
That’d be the end of it, except Italy holds the corporate officers of a company convicted of a crime personally liable. So specific employees of the hosting company might be named in the defamation suit, if publishing this defamation violates an Italian law. Again, the Italian court has no power to do anything to them in the UK – but they wouldn’t want to travel to Italy anymore.
Not necessarily. The European Arrest Warrant changed all that.
People can now be dragged all over Europe merely on the suspicion of having committed a crime, providing the sentence for the crime, were it to be imposed, is at least 12 months in prison. The accusing country does not have to demonstrate any evidence or proof. The country where the person resides cannot refuse to transfer them to the accusing country. It’s automatic.
Does it apply in this hypothetical case? I’ve no idea. But if bad things can happen they usually do. There may well be some risk.
Official website: http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/criminal/extradition/fsj_criminal_extradition_en.htm
Ok so could one say that web site content is subject to the laws of the country in which it is hosted? As I understand it if a country does not allow for example racist content, then you definitely cannot have a server there hosting such content. On the other hand if a person from this country puts racist content on his website, but hosted in another country, he is still liable as a person to his own country’s laws.
You could say that, but the truth of the matter is that lawyers are going to be arguing about these issues for the next couple of years at least so nothing you say will be technically correct as the courts are still trying to figure out how all this stuff is going to work.
gotcha, thanks for the discussion
The web site content would be subject (at least to some extent) to the laws of three countries - the one the author is in, the one the site is hosted in, and the one the visitor viewing the page is in.
Exactly what action could be taken would depend on what the laws of the three countries were and how they might inter-relate.