Eveline Lubbers on Mon, 15 Apr 2002 19:14:07 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Radikal-case in court after 5 years |
German authorities sure have long breath.. evel PS: latest news: XS4ALL lost the case and had to block the site. More later. Hello all, Please find a rough translation of a press release from XS4ALL below. Tomorrow morning at 9.30 AM we will stand in front of an Amsterdam judge because of a homepage containing articles from the german magazine Radikal, a case dating from the previous century... Best wishes, Sjoera Nas, public affairs XS4ALL XS4ALL press release 14 April 2002 Last Thursday, Deutsche Bahn has initiated summary proceedings against Dutch Internetprovider XS4ALL. The judge of The Amsterdam court will deal with the case on the early morning of Monday 15 April. The German railroad company demands that XS4ALL immediately blocks the homepage of one of its users because of 2 articles from the German radical-left magazine Radikal, dating from 1996 and 1997. The articles have been online since their (paper) publication and contain instructions about the delaying of Castor-transports of nuclear waste. These transports have always been accompanied by massive protests from the German public. XS4ALL was summoned on Monday 8 April by lawyers of the Deutsche Bahn to remove the material. XS4ALL has a standard procedure to deal with complaints about illegal or infringing material. Following that procedure, XS4ALL asked DB to substantiate how this material is illegal under Dutch law. Instead, Deutsche Bahn responded last thursday by serving XS4ALL with a lawsuit. XS4ALL is very upset about the extremely short preparation time, especially in view of the fact that the materials have been online for 4 and 5 years respectively. In 1996 and 1997 the Radikal-case caused a lot of public upheaval, when German providers were summoned to make this specific homepage unavailable to their subscribers. The blocking was lifted twice, when it became clear how ineffective it was. Neither the Dutch nor German authorities have ever ordered XS4ALL to remove the material. On top of that, the paper publication was never forbidden in the Netherlands. In the European Directive for E-Commerce of 8 June 2000 the liability of internet service providers is defined in a very precise way. This directive should have been implemented in Dutch law by 17 January 2002. Now that the implementation-term has passed, the judge needs to explain current Dutch law according to the Directive. XS4ALL believes that its procedure to deal with complaints about illegal content is completely in agreement with the intentions of the Directive. Lacking any substantiation of the unmistakable illegality of the material, it is up to the Dutch court to judge. If the judge, after all this time, decides that the material is illegal, XS4ALL will not hesitate to remove it. Disputed homepage: http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/radikal/ XS4ALL procedure: http://www.xs4all.nl/overxs4all/auteursrecht/illegalcontent.html # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net